Map of Arakan State, Burma

Summary

The deadly violence that erupted between ethnic Arakanese
Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in early June 2012 in Burma’s Arakan State
began as sectarian clashes in four townships. When violence resumed in October,
it engulfed nine more townships and became a coordinated campaign to forcibly
relocate or remove the state’s Muslims.

The October attacks were against Rohingya and Kaman Muslim
communities and were organized, incited, and committed by local Arakanese political
party operatives, the Buddhist monkhood, and ordinary Arakanese, at times
directly supported by state security forces. Rohingya men, women, and children
were killed, some were buried in mass graves, and their villages and
neighborhoods were razed. While the state security forces in some instances
intervened to prevent violence and protect fleeing Muslims, more frequently
they stood aside during attacks or directly supported the assailants,
committing killings and other abuses. In the months since the violence, the
Burmese government of President Thein Sein has taken no serious steps to hold
accountable those responsible or to prevent future outbreaks of violence.

The violence since June displaced at least 125,000 Rohingya
and other Muslims, and a smaller number of Arakanese, to internally displaced
person (IDP) camps. Many of the displaced Muslims have been living in
overcrowded camps that lack adequate food, shelter, water and sanitation, and medical
care. Security forces in some areas have provided protection to displaced
Muslims, but more typically they have acted as their jailers, preventing access
to markets, livelihoods, and humanitarian assistance, for which many are in
desperate need.

In the Aung Mingalar area of Sittwe, the Arakan State
capital, the government has imposed such severe restrictions on the remaining
Muslim residents that they are effectively locked up in their own neighborhood.
United Nations officials have been denied access to them.

Human Rights Watch traveled to Arakan State following the
waves of violence in June and October, going to the sites of attacks. We also visited
every major IDP camp as well as numerous unofficial displacement sites and
communities now hosting Muslim displaced persons. This report draws on over 100
interviews conducted during those visits with Rohingya and non-Rohingya Muslims
and Arakanese who have suffered or witnessed abuses and been displaced, as well
as some organizers and perpetrators of violence. We also spoke with diplomats,
United Nations officials, and humanitarian aid workers. Human Rights Watch’s
focus was on the five townships that experienced the greatest violence and
abuses in June and October, where property destruction and arson were so
widespread that the damage was visible in satellite images.

The sectarian violence in June was sparked by the rape and
murder on May 28, 2012 of a 28-year-old Arakanese woman by three Muslim men in
Ramri Township. On June 3, a large group of Arakanese villagers in Toungop
town, southeast of Ramri, stopped a bus and beat and killed ten Muslims who
were on board. Violence between Arakanese Buddhists and Rohingya intensified, with
mobs on both sides committing killings and arson. Both communities’ populations
suffered and thousands fled their homes. While the state security forces
initially did nothing to halt the violence, they soon joined in with Arakanese mobs
to attack and burn Muslim neighborhoods and villages.

The violence in October was clearly much more organized and
planned. For months, local Arakanese political party officials and senior
Buddhist monks publicly vilified the Rohingya population and described them as
a threat to Arakan State. On October 23, thousands of Arakanese men armed with
machetes, swords, homemade guns, Molotov cocktails, and other weapons descended
upon and attacked Muslim villages in nine townships throughout the state. State
security forces either failed to intervene or participated directly in the
violence. In some cases attacks occurred simultaneously in townships separated
by considerable distance.

In the deadliest incident, on October 23 at least 70
Rohingya were killed in a massacre in Yan Thei village in Mrauk-U Township. Despite
advance warning of the attack, only a small number of riot police, local
police, and army soldiers were on duty to provide security. Instead of
preventing the attack by the Arakanese mob or escorting the villagers to safety,
they assisted the killings by disarming the Rohingya of their sticks and other
rudimentary weapons they carried to defend themselves.

“First the soldiers told us, ‘Do not do
anything, we will protect you, we will save you,’ so we trusted
them,” a 25-year-old survivor told Human Rights Watch. “But later
they broke that promise. The Arakanese beat and killed us very easily. The
security did not protect us from them.”

The violence in Yan Thei began at 6:30 a.m. and lasted all
day until army reinforcements arrived and finally intervened at 5 p.m. Included
in the death toll were 28 children who were hacked to death, including 13 under
age 5.

Satellite images obtained by Human Rights Watch from just 5
of the 13 townships that experienced violence since June 2012 show 27 unique
zones of destruction. Images of affected areas in Sittwe, depicting destruction
that occurred in June 2012, show 2,558 destroyed structures. Those from 4 of
the 9 townships that experienced violence in October show 2,304 destroyed
structures. This partial picture of the violence means that at least 4,862
structures were destroyed in Arakan State since June, altogether covering 348
acres of mostly residential property.

Crimes Against Humanity and Ethnic Cleansing

The criminal acts committed against the Rohingya and Kaman
Muslim communities in Arakan State beginning in June 2012 amount to crimes
against humanity carried out as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Under
international law, crimes against humanity are crimes committed as part of a
widespread or systematic attack on a civilian population. The attack must be against
a specific population and part of a state or organizational policy. Non-state
organizations – including political parties and religious bodies – can
be responsible for crimes against humanity if they have a sufficient degree of
organization.

“Ethnic cleansing,” though not a formal legal
term, has been defined as a purposeful policy by an ethnic or religious group
to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of
another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.

United Nations bodies have long acknowledged deportation,
forced population transfers, and other abuses against Rohingya in Arakan State.
Since the 1990s, UN special rapporteurs have identified these abuses in terms
indicating the commission of international crimes, referring to the abuses as
“widespread,” “systematic,” and resulting from
“state policy.” The events of 2012 provide strong new evidence of
such crimes.

The evidence indicates that political and religious leaders
in Arakan State planned, organized, and incited attacks against the Rohingya
and other Muslims with the intent to drive them from the state or at least
relocate them from areas in which they had been residing – particularly
from areas shared with the majority Buddhist population. While more moderate
voices exist within the political and religious establishment in Arakan State, they
were and remain sidelined.

A great deal of local organizing preceded and supported October’s
violence. Arakanese political parties, monks’ associations, and community
groups issued numerous anti-Rohingya pamphlets and public statements. Most of
the public statements and pamphlets explicitly or implicitly deny the existence
of the Rohingya ethnicity, demonize them, and call for their removal from the
country, even sometimes using the phrase “ethnic cleansing.” The
statements frequently were released in connection with organized meetings and
in full view of local, state, and national authorities who raised no concerns.

Prior to the October violence, local authorities took
various measures that appeared to promote anti-Rohingya hatred and encourage
Rohingya to move from their homes. In Pauktaw, for example, local government
officials and members of the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party (RNDP)
– the dominant ethnic Arakanese party in Arakan State – held
several meetings to press Rohingya to leave the area. On October 18, just days
before the renewed violence in the state, the All-Arakanese Monks’
Solidarity Conference was held in Sittwe. The monks, who hold very high moral
authority among the Arakanese Buddhist population, issued a virulently
anti-Rohingya statement that urged townships to band together to “help
solve” the “problem.” According to local Rohingya, the
attacks that occurred on October 23 appeared to involve many Arakanese who were
not from the immediate area.

Since June, local authorities, politicians, and monks have
acted, often through public statements and force, to prevent the Rohingya and
Kaman populations in their midst from conducting ordinary day-to-day activities.
They have denied Muslims their rights to freedom of movement, opportunities to earn
a living, and access to markets and to humanitarian aid. The apparent goal has
been to coerce them to abandon their homes and leave the area.

“The RNDP leaders were giving the orders to the
people,” said a displaced Rohingya man, 27, from Pauktaw. “In one
group there were 20 people [Arakanese] and they were ordered to secure the area
around our village. If any food entered to the Rohingya part of the village
they would stop it.”

Crimes against humanity included killings, forcible
population transfers and deportation, persecution, and other violence that were
widespread, systematic, and directed at the Muslim population. The many public
statements and documents from political and religious leaders demonstrated a
policy of committing crimes against humanity. The use of terror-inspiring
tactics by Arakanese mobs shows intent to commit ethnic cleansing.

Burmese state involvement in the crimes appears to have been
both direct and indirect. While much of the violence appears to have been
carried out by mobs with weapons, various branches of the state security forces
stood by and did nothing to provide security for attacked Muslims and at times
participated directly in the atrocities – this includes the local police,
Lon Thein riot police, the inter-agency border control force called Nasaka, and
the army and navy.

Human Rights Watch found no indications that the Burmese government
has seriously investigated or taken legal action against those responsible for
planning, organizing, or participating in the violence either in June or
October. This absence of accountability lends credence to allegations that this
was a government-supported campaign of ethnic cleansing in which crimes against
humanity were committed. Security forces have actively impeded accountability
and justice by overseeing or ordering the digging of mass graves, or by digging
mass graves themselves, in some cases after killings involving state security
forces.

For instance, on June 13, a government truck dumped 18 naked
and half-clothed bodies near a Rohingya IDP camp outside of Sittwe, which local
Rohingya buried in two mass graves. None of the bodies were identified. Local
residents took photographs showing some victims who had been
“hogtied” with string or plastic strips before being executed. By
leaving the bodies near a camp for displaced Rohingya, the soldiers were
sending a message – consistent with a policy of ethnic cleansing –
that the Rohingya should leave permanently.

“They dropped the bodies right here,” said a
Rohingya man, who saw the bodies being dumped and later buried. He told Human
Rights Watch: “Three bodies had gunshot wounds. Some had burns, some had
stab wounds. One gunshot wound was on the forehead, one on the chest. Two
men’s hands were tied at the wrists in front and another one had his arms
tied in the back.”

Witnesses also said they saw several Burmese army soldiers
digging a large mass grave on June 14, with trucks full of dead bodies, on a
road outside a Rohingya IDP camp near Sittwe.

The Humanitarian Crisis

Arakan State is now in the midst of a major humanitarian
crisis. While the Burmese government has hosted high-profile diplomatic visits
to displacement sites in an apparent show of commitment to the needs of those
affected by the violence, it has simultaneously obstructed the delivery of
humanitarian aid, leading to an unknown number of preventable deaths. Tens of thousands
of Rohingya have fled the country by sea with hopes of reaching Bangladesh,
Malaysia, or Thailand, and many thousands more appear ready to do the same.

The humanitarian situation in Rohingya IDP sites throughout
the state remains dire, even in the larger camps populated by those displaced in
June 2012. Tens of thousands of Rohingya are currently not receiving adequate assistance.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA),
thousands of children are at risk of dying from acute malnutrition, while tens
of thousands are without sufficient shelter, food, water, and sanitation.

Nearly every IDP site suffers disturbing inadequacies,
though the particulars vary from site to site. Many Muslim IDPs have been
living in overcrowded tent camps, others in “semi-permanent”
structures, and some have had no shelter or basic aid at all, in full knowledge
of the Burmese authorities. Meanwhile, the relatively few sites populated by
displaced Arakanese have been well provided for by local and national
government programs, and are supported by national TV and radio fundraising drives
that secure donations from Burmese society only for displaced Arakanese.

The deep and widespread animosity among the local Arakanese
community toward the UN agencies and international organizations providing
relief to displaced Muslim populations has provided another serious obstacle to
the delivery of humanitarian aid. Arakanese residents and Buddhist monks have
protested against international aid for Rohingya, physically blocked aid deliveries,
and threatened aid workers. The state security forces have done little to end
the obstruction.

The government has also continued to prevent international
aid organizations from resuming some programs that existed prior to the onset
of the violence in June. This has had a very negative humanitarian impact on
the Muslim populations, particularly in the northern part of the state.

The Rohingya: A History of Persecution

Violence between Buddhists and Muslims in Arakan State dates
back many decades. The contemporary conflict can be traced at least to the
Second World War, when the Rohingya remained loyal to the British colonial
rulers, and the Arakanese sided with the invading Japanese. Clashes between
Arakanese and Rohingya have occurred ever since. While both populations have faced
oppression by successive Burmese governments after independence in 1948, governments
in the predominantly Buddhist country have routinely persecuted and forcibly
displaced the Rohingya population, altering the ethnic profile of Arakan State.

In 1978, the Burmese military drove over 200,000 Rohingya
out of the country in a bloody rampage of killings, rape, and arson. The
military repeated its anti-Rohingya campaign in 1991 with a wave of attacks
that forced over 250,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh. Many of those were
ultimately forced back to Burma – to northern Arakan State, where the
Burmese government has sought to concentrate the Rohingya away from Arakanese-dominated
parts of the state, and has subjected them to a battery of restrictive
regulations and denial of rights.

Violence against Muslims in the state has continued over the
years. In 2001, Arakanese mobs attacked Rohingya in Sittwe, destroying mosques
and schools while state security forces stood by and watched.

Central to the persecution of the Rohingya is the 1982
Citizenship Law, which effectively denies Burmese citizenship to Rohingya on
discriminatory ethnic grounds. Because the law does not consider the Rohingya
to be one of the eight recognized “national races” (along with ethnic
Burmans, Arakanese, Karen, and other groups), which would entitle them to
citizenship, they must provide “conclusive evidence” that their
ancestors settled in Burma before independence in 1948, a difficult if not
impossible task for most Rohingya families. Kaman Muslims, as a legally
recognized ethnic group, are Burmese citizens.

The government, and Burmese society more broadly, openly
considers the Rohingya to be illegal immigrants from what is now Bangladesh and
not a distinct “national race” of Burma, denying them consideration
for citizenship. Official statements refer to them as “Bengali,”
“so-called Rohingya,” or the pejorative “kalar.”

Despite claims that virtually all Rohingya are
“Bengali,” most Rohingya in Burma were born in the country, many to
families whose lineage goes back several generations. The government has made
use of this denial of citizenship to deprive Rohingya of many fundamental
rights. Rohingya face restrictions on freedom of movement, education, marriage,
and employment – rights that are guaranteed to non-citizens as well as
citizens under international law. Various other human rights violations have
accompanied the persecution of the Rohingya over the years, including arbitrary
detention, forced labor, rape, torture, forcible relocations, and other abuses.
While the Burmese government and military has similarly mistreated the
Arakanese population over the years, the oppression and abuse of the Rohingya
in Arakan State has been particularly severe.

Since the June violence, thousands of Rohingya asylum
seekers have attempted to flee from Burma to Bangladesh, crossing the Naf River
or finding alternative routes by sea. The Bangladeshi government closed its
borders, forcing asylum seekers back to sea on barely seaworthy boats in
violation of its international legal obligation not to return someone to a
place where they face persecution. Thailand has similarly “helped
on” thousands of Rohingya asylum seekers since June, in some cases
following a policy to provide boats with supplies to continue their voyage to
Malaysia, but in other cases pushing them back to sea or handing them over to
human traffickers.

Response from Naypyidaw

A month after the June violence, on July 12, President Thein
Sein called for “illegal” Rohingya to be sent to “third
countries.” Since most Rohingya, even those whose families have resided
in Burma for generations, lack formal legal status, the president’s
language implied that the great majority of Burma’s Rohingya did not
belong in the country.

The president’s statement has had consequences in
Arakan State. It continues to be invoked by Arakanese community leaders who
view expulsion of Rohingya from Burma as an appropriate political solution. But
this notion extends beyond the Arakanese population and dominates thinking in much
of Burmese officialdom and society. It is even reflected in the statements and
actions of some of Burma’s prominent democracy activists, including
opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Even in the absence of further attempts to drive Rohingya
from the country or keep them in displacement camps away from their homes,
there are serious concerns that the government seeks to segregate the Buddhist
and Muslim populations in Arakan State, facilitating the deprivation of
fundamental rights of the largely stateless Rohingya.

On August 17, Thein Sein established a 27-member
“investigative commission” to “reveal the truth behind the
unrest” and “find solutions for communities with different
religious beliefs to live together in harmony.” On August 25, he accused
local forces in Arakan State of fueling the violence, saying, “Political
parties, some monks, and some individuals are increasing the ethnic
hatred.” Nonetheless, no serious measures have been taken in Arakan State
to hold accountable those responsible for the violence since June, or take
effective steps to prevent groups from further engaging in sectarian violence. And
it is unclear to what extent the commission’s long-delayed report will provide
details on responsibility for abuses and address broader issues of citizenship,
humanitarian aid, and accountability.

Following the violence in October, the president’s
office issued ominous allegations that “persons and organizations”
were responsible for manipulating the incidents “behind the scene[s],”
adding that they “will be exposed and legal actions will be taken against
them.” The president has not followed up on this statement, and subsequent
press releases from the government in October and December denied any role of
state security forces in the violence.

Perhaps in response to growing international concerns, Thein
Sein subsequently offered a more helpful response to the situation. In a
November 16 letter to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, he condemned the
“criminal acts” that led to the “senseless violence” in
Arakan State and noted that “once emotions subside on all sides”
his government was prepared to “ … address contentious political
dimensions, ranging from resettlement of displaced populations to granting of
citizenship ... [to] issues of birth registration, work permits, and permits
for movement across the country for all, in line with a uniform national
practice across the country ensuring that they are in keeping with accepted
international norms.”

This message was reiterated in a statement released on
November 18, prior to US President Barack Obama’s visit to Burma – the
first-ever visit to Burma by a sitting US president.

Since then, however, the government has taken no significant
steps to address these issues, or even to provide a roadmap for the way
forward. In the meantime, violence against Muslims in Burma has spread beyond
Arakan State. Between March 20 and 22, mobs of Buddhists, led in some instances
by Buddhist monks, attacked Muslims in Meiktila, Mandalay Region, following
weeks of incitement through anti-Muslim sermons by members of the Buddhist
monkhood. An estimated 40 were killed and 61 were wounded, and the destruction
of Muslim property, businesses, and places of worship was clearly visible from
satellite imagery. According to a needs assessment released by the United
Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), over 12,000
people were displaced by the violence in Meiktila and are in shelters around
the town. After the Burma army ended the violence in Meiktila on March 23,
anti-Muslim violence spread elsewhere in central Burma, including Okpho,
Gyobingauk, and Minhla townships of Pegu Region. Soldiers reportedly fired
warning shots in the air to disperse protesters in Pegu, and the government
placed another nine townships in Burma under emergency provisions or curfew,
limiting public assembly.

In response to the spread of anti-Muslim violence, the UN
Special Rapporteur on human rights in Burma, Tomas Ojea Quintana, said he
received reports of state involvement in some of the violence, adding:
“This may indicate direct involvement by some sections of the State or
implicit collusion and support for such actions.”

Understandably, most of the Muslims in Arakan State
interviewed by Human Rights Watch expressed desperation and hopelessness as to
their current situation and future. The authorities have done little to reverse
their plight. When mobs of Arakanese were destroying a Muslim quarter of Kyauk
Pyu Township in October, one displaced Muslim man asked an army soldier for
protection. Capturing what many Muslims in the state already believe, the
soldier replied: “The only thing you can do is pray to save your lives.”

Key
Recommendations to the Government of Burma

Fully, promptly, and impartially investigate those
responsible for serious abuses in connection with the violence in Arakan
State and prosecute them fairly to the fullest extent of the law,
regardless of rank or position.

Revise legislation as necessary and ensure that state
practice upholds the equal rights of Rohingya and other Muslims in Burma
in accordance with international human rights law.

Immediately lift all unnecessary restrictions on freedom
of movement of the Rohingya population; ensure they are able to pursue
livelihoods, purchase essentials, and return to their homes and recover
property; and provide them protection as needed. Ensure that returns of
displaced persons and refugees take place in accordance with international
standards, on a voluntary basis with attention to the safety and dignity
of the returning population.

Provide safe and unhindered humanitarian access for UN
agencies and international and national humanitarian organizations to all
affected populations and detention facilities in Arakan State.

Agree to the establishment of an independent international
mechanism to investigate serious violations of international human rights
law, including possible crimes against humanity, committed by security
forces and non-state actors in Arakan State.

Permit the UN special rapporteur to conduct an independent
investigation into abuses in Arakan State and support efforts to establish
an OHCHR office in Burma with a full protection, promotion, and technical
assistance mandate, and sub-offices in states around the country,
including Arakan State.

Urgently amend the 1982 Citizenship Act to eliminate
provisions that are discriminatory or have a discriminatory impact on
determining citizenship for reasons of ethnicity, race, religion or other
protected status. Ensure that Rohingya children have the right to acquire
a nationality where otherwise they would be stateless.

Methodology

Human Rights Watch conducted research for this report in
Burma and Bangladesh in June and July 2012, and in Burma in October and
November 2012, and continued to closely monitor the situation through the time
of writing. The report is based on 104 interviews with individuals who witnessed
or were otherwise directly affected by the violence in June and October 2012, and
at least 10 group interviews with Rohingya, Kaman, and Arakanese, encompassing
over 100 additional persons. The individual interviews overall comprised 54
Rohingya, 34 Arakanese, and 9 Kaman, as well as additional interviews with aid
workers and others. Human Rights Watch visited more than 20 displacement sites,
including informal camps for internally displaced Arakanese and Rohingya, and
formally established internally displaced person camps for Rohingya and Kaman.

Interviews were conducted in Burmese, Arakanese, and
Rohingya languages with English interpretation. In a few cases, we conducted
interviews directly in English.

While the Burmese authorities are beginning to allow media
and nongovernmental organizations to conduct research or monitor human rights
issues inside violence-affected areas, access to many areas is still difficult
and replete with security challenges. Moreover, researching human rights in
Burma continues to be a difficult undertaking because of surveillance of the
population by agents of the state and the risk of government retaliation
against victims or others who provide information to researchers. Researching
human rights abuses against Muslims brings an added risk of retaliation from
local Buddhist communities in Arakan State opposed to such research.

Because of possible reprisals, the names of the victims,
witnesses, and the precise dates and locations of interviews have been
withheld. Pseudonyms are used for all interviewees named in this report, and
interviews are cited with initials that do not reflect the actual initials of
those interviewed. In some cases, other identifying information has been
withheld in the interest of protecting confidentiality.

All those interviewed were informed of the purpose of the
interview, its voluntary nature, and the ways in which the information would be
used. All provided oral consent to be interviewed. None received compensation.

Between June and December 2012, Human Rights Watch also
consulted and interviewed numerous UN and NGO staff members; national,
regional, and local politicians; democracy activists, and local and
international journalists who provided additional information about the
situation in Arakan State. We also drew on a number of secondary sources
including UN reports, academic studies and other publications, previous Human
Rights Watch reporting, and other NGO reports.

In this report Human Rights Watch uses the terms
“Burma” in reference to the country and “Arakan State”
in reference to the state in question. The Burmese government refers to the
country as “Myanmar” and the state as “Rakhine State,”
reflecting name changes implemented by the military government that seized
power in 1989. As such, Human Rights Watch refers to the Buddhist ethnic
population as Arakanese while the Burmese government refers to them as Rakhine.
All of these terms are used within Burma. The 2008 Constitution also changed the
administrative areas called “Divisions” to “Regions,”
so for example Pegu Division became Pegu Region after March 2011 when the
constitution came into force.

Chronology of Events: May
2012-April 2013

May 28, 2012: Three Muslim men rape and murder Thida
Htwe, a 28-year-old Arakanese Buddhist woman in Kyaw Ne Maw village, Ramri
Township. Police arrest them and later report that one of the men committed
suicide in police custody. The remaining two are brought to court, found
guilty, and sentenced to death.

June 3: Hundreds of Arakanese surround a bus carrying
Muslim travelers at a government checkpoint in Toungop, Arakan State. Ten
Muslims are forced off the bus and beaten to death while nearby police and army
soldiers look on but do not intervene to stop the violence.

June 7: The government appoints a 16-person committee
to investigate the cause of the June 3 massacre of the 10 Muslims in Toungop,
chaired by Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Kyaw Zan Myint. Tasked with
reporting to the president by June 30, the committee has yet to publish any
findings.

June 8: Residents riot in a predominantly Rohingya Muslim
area of Maungdaw Township, Arakan State, burning Arakanese homes and killing an
unknown number of Arakanese.

June 8-12: Violence spreads to Sittwe Township, where
Arakanese and Rohingya clash in arson attacks and killings. State security
forces fail to intervene to stop the violence or protect either side, and in
some cases participate in the violence against Muslims. Security forces begin a
crackdown on Muslims, displacing about 100,000 people from their homes,
including 75,000 Muslims. They conduct forcible mass arrests of Rohingya men
and boys throughout the state. Hundreds of Rohingya are detained incommunicado.

June 10: President Thein Sein calls a state of
emergency in Arakan State, putting the armed forces in charge of restoring
order and instituting a curfew in several townships throughout the state.

June-October: Local Arakanese political leaders and
Buddhist monks urge the economic and social isolation of Muslims, and some make
explicit calls for the “ethnic cleansing” of Muslims from the area.

July 6: The UN announces that the government has
detained 10 Rohingya aid workers from UN and international humanitarian
agencies. At this writing, five remain detained without being publicly charged.

July 12: President Thein Sein says the “only
solution” for the situation in Arakan State is to expel
“illegal” Rohingya to other countries or to camps overseen by the
UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), implying camps in Bangladesh. UNHCR
quickly rejects the proposal.

August 2: Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin accuses
outsiders of “politicizing” the unrest, saying the government
“strongly rejects the accusations made by some quarters that abusive and
excessive uses of force were made by the authorities in dealing with the
situation.”

August 17: Thein Sein establishes a 27-member
commission “to reveal the truth behind the unrest” and “find
solutions for communities with different religious beliefs to live together in
harmony.” He states in a report to parliament: “Political parties,
some monks, and some individuals are increasing the ethnic hatred.”

September 22-23: The government hosts a two-day
workshop in Naypyidaw on the situation in Arakan State. Vice President Sai Mauk
Kham attributes the situation in the state to a lack of economic development: “Only
when the socio-economic life of both sides [is] improved can the two societies
stay together.”

October 21-24: Violence erupts nearly simultaneously in
nine townships throughout Arakan State with attacks against Rohingya and Kaman
Muslims. Approximately 40,000 are displaced. State security forces again fail
to intervene, and many

participate in violence against Muslims. Among the
dead are at least 70 Muslims massacred in Mrauk-U, including 28 children.

October 25: The president’s office states that
“riots erupted ... unexpectedly,” and that only 12 people were
killed. The office holds “persons and organizations” responsible
for “conducting manipulation in the incidents ... behind the scene.”

November 16: Prior to the visit of US President
Obama, Thein Sein states that “once emotions subside on all sides”
his government is prepared to address resettlement of displaced populations, granting
of citizenship, birth registration, work permits, and permits for movement
across the country, among other issues.

November 19: US President Obama visits Rangoon and
delivers a historic speech at Rangoon University, warning of “the danger
of continued violence” in Arakan State, adding: “National
reconciliation will take time, but for the sake of our common humanity, and for
the sake of this country’s future, it is necessary to stop the incitement
and to stop violence.”

December 6: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs denies
that security forces and local authorities had any role in the “communal
violence” or in discrimination against the “so-called Rohingyas.”

November 2012-April 2013: Sporadic incidents of
violence against Muslims in Arakan State continue, including sexual violence by
security forces against Rohingya women. Tens of thousands are living
precariously in IDP camps or isolated communities, without livelihoods and
access to urgently needed humanitarian aid. Thousands of Rohingya flee by boat
from Arakan State to Bangladesh, Thailand, and Malaysia. UNHCR estimates in
December that 13,000 Rohingya arrived by boat in Malaysia in 2012 and refers to
the “sailing season” as “unprecedented.” Thai
authorities announce 6,000 Rohingya, including women and children, arrived on
Thai shores since October 2012. News reports indicate several hundred Rohingya
have died at sea.

I. Promoting Ethnic Cleansing:
June-October 2012

The Arakanese treated us so badly, stopping our food
supply. One Arakanese said to me, “We will stop all food for you, and do
you know why? We’ll do it so you’ll leave here quickly and
permanently.”[1]

—Rohingya
man from Pauktaw, Arakan State, referring to the situation before violent
attacks in October 2012

Appeals for Ethnic Cleansing of
Muslims

Beginning in June 2012, Arakanese political parties, local monks’
associations, and Arakanese civic groups made public statements and issued
numerous pamphlets that directly or indirectly urged the ethnic cleansing of
Rohingya from Arakan State and the country. The statements and pamphlets typically
deny the existence of the Rohingya ethnicity, demonize the Rohingya, and call
for their removal from the country. Most were issued following public meetings
that national officials should have understood to be clear warning signs of
imminent and serious violence.

The two groups most influential in organizing anti-Rohingya
activities in this period were the local order of Buddhist monks (the sangha)
and the locally powerful Rakhine Nationalities Development Party (RNDP), a
party founded in 2010 by Arakanese nationalists. The RNDP currently holds 18 of
the 45 seats in the state parliament, or hluttaw, and 14 seats in the national
parliament.[2]
The RNDP is the dominant party in the Arakan State parliament, making it the
only political party in Burma to have more seats at the state level than the
ruling Union State and Development Party (USDP).

In many instances, calls by monks and the RNDP for the
ouster of Rohingya and Kaman Muslim communities were accompanied by
instructions to the Buddhist population to socially and economically isolate
them. The apparent aim was to cut off the remaining Muslims from
income-generating activities, access to markets and food, and other basic
services necessary for daily survival so that they would decide to leave.

Immediately after the first wave of sectarian violence in
June 2012, local Buddhist monks circulated pamphlets calling for the isolation
of Muslims. For instance, on June 29, monks in Sittwe distributed an incendiary
pamphlet to the local Arakanese population, telling all Arakanese that they
“Must not do business with Bengalis [Rohingya],” and “Must
not associate with Bengalis [Rohingya].” The pamphlet alleged that the
Rohingya sought to eliminate the Arakanese population, stating that the
“Bengalis [Rohingya] who dwell on Arakanese land, drink Arakanese water,
and rest under Arakanese shadows are now working for the extinction of the
Arakanese.”[3] It
implored the people to follow the demands to socially and economically isolate
the Rohingya to prevent the “extinction of the Arakanese.”[4]

The day the pamphlet was distributed, a Buddhist monk in
Sittwe who spearheaded the effort told Human Rights Watch:

This morning we handed our pamphlet out downtown [in
Sittwe]. It is an announcement demanding that the Arakanese people must not
sell anything to the Muslims or buy anything from them. The second point is the
Arakanese people must not be friendly with the Muslim people. The reason for
that is that the Muslim people are stealing our land, drinking our water, and
killing our people. They are eating our rice and staying near our houses. So we
will separate. We don’t want any connection to the Muslim people at all.[5]

This action was replicated by other Arakanese organizations
throughout the state. On July 5, monks representing the sangha in
Rathedaung Township, 30 kilometers north of Sittwe, held a meeting and
subsequently issued a 12-point statement. The preamble unabashedly presents a
plan for the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya: “‘Arakan Ethnic Cleansing
Program’ of bad pagan Bengali (kalar) [derogatory term for Rohingya],
taking advantage of our kindness to them, is revealed today.”[6]

The statement calls on Arakanese in Rathedaung Township to
avoid employing Rohingya in a range of jobs, including day laborers, carpenters,
masons, and in farming.[7]
It also says Rohingya should not to be employed in government offices or by
NGOs operating in the township, and that all NGOs providing aid to the Rohingya
in the township must withdraw.[8]

On July 9, the monks' association in
Mrauk-U released a similar statement:

The Arakanese people must understand that
Bengalis [Rohingya] want to destroy the land of Arakan, are eating Arakan rice
and plan to exterminate Arakanese people and use their money to buy weapons to kill
Arakanese people. For this reason and from today, no Arakanese should sell any
goods to Bengalis, hire Bengalis as workers, provide any food to Bengalis and
have any dealings with them, as they are cruel by nature.[9]

The RNDP also played an instrumental role in stoking fear
and encouraging isolation of and violence against the Rohingya. A public
statement released by the RNDP on July 26, attributed to RNDP chairman Dr. Aye
Maung,[10] says
“the present Bengali population causes threats for the
whole Arakan people and other ethnic groups.”[11]
The party statement denies the existence of the Rohingya and refers to a
“fabricated history,” stating the “Bengalis” are
“damaging Arakan people and national sovereignty.” Finally, it urges
a “complete solution,” including a call to
“temporarily relocate” Rohingya “so that they do not reside
mixed or close to Arakan people in Arakan State territorial towns and
villages,” and to “transfer non-Burmese Bengali nationals to third
countries.”[12]

In some cases, the RNDP issued warnings and threats against
Arakanese found to be aiding or associating with Rohingya in any way.[13]
Two photos of unknown provenance have emerged online showing Arakanese men who
were found providing food to Rohingya. The men are shackled and in one photo, a
homemade sign is placed around the neck of an Arakanese detainee in custody
that states, “I am a traitor and slave of kalar.”[14]
In the other photo, a shackled man is wearing a woman’s garment on his
head, which is considered highly humiliating and culturally shameful for an
Arakanese man.[15]
Before these photos emerged, local Arakanese sympathetic to the plight of the
Rohingya explained to Human Rights Watch that it would be extremely dangerous
for them to go near the Rohingya IDP camps, let alone provide aid. They feared
they might experience violence from their own community that would regard their
actions as “traitorous.”[16]

In late September, a large two-day public meeting was held
in Rathedaung that resulted in a public statement. There were approximately
2,000 Arakanese participants, including representatives from all 17 state
townships and representatives from major political parties and social
organizations. It was billed as the largest public meeting in modern Arakan
history.[17]
The discussion focused almost completely on the Rohingya.

Many Arakanese view the Rohingya as monolithic group
intent on waging an anti-Buddhist war in Arakan State or at least spreading
fundamentalist Islam there, and throughout the country. Although Burma has a
long and continuing history of ethnic armed movements, according to Martin
Smith in his seminal work on Burma’s ethnic groups, “no insurgent
group has made much progress in the Muslim community.”[18]
Non-state armed groups called the Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO) and
the Arakan Rohingya Islamic Front (ARIF) were established in northern Arakan
State in 1982 and 1987, respectively. But Smith and others agree these groups
and others never posed a serious threat to the Burmese military state, their
principal target, nor to Burmese society.[19]

Yet several Arakanese interviewed by Human Rights Watch
referred to Rohingya as “kalar terrorists” and claimed
“every mosque” in Arakan State has a store of weapons and that
every imam has connections with al-Qaeda.[20] Local police and the
Nasaka (officially Nay-Sat Kut-kwey Ye, the interagency border guard force
comprising military, police, immigration, and customs) directly fueled these
beliefs after the June violence, making statements to monks and the Arakanese
populace that attributed violent characteristics to the Rohingya as a whole.

For instance, the Buddhist monk in Sittwe who initially
led the campaign to isolate Muslims after the June violence told Human Rights
Watch:

In Arakan State, the biggest mosque is near the Noble
Hotel [in Sittwe]. The government found two boxes filled with weapons there,
but they didn’t say anything to the media. Arakanese soldiers [police]
told me they found it. They told the people too. The reason why the
government is silent is that if they announce it, the problem will get
bigger, not only in Burma but throughout the world.[21]

Another Arakanese man in Sittwe said:

It was widely rumored that arms and ammunitions were
found in some of the mosques [after the June violence]. In my opinion, I
think it is about 80 percent true. I heard some police officers say it. But
the government didn’t say anything about that. I don’t know why.[22]

An Arakanese elder in Sittwe said: “About 50 percent
of the so-called Rohingya Muslims are Taliban-minded. They study in the
madrassas [Islamic religious schools]. Their ideology is the same as the
Taliban. The police know this and discuss it [with us].”[23]
And another Arakanese man in Sittwe said the authorities told him that they
found weapons owned by Rohingya hidden in NGO offices[24]
– an allegation that was never substantiated by any government
official.

Moreover, government-controlled media has blamed the
violence in Arakan State on Rohingya “terrorists,” and this has
become a widely held belief in Burma.[25] Online social media
sites are replete with such allegations, accessed primarily by Burmese in
urban centers, and the sentiment has been disseminated in sermons by popular
Buddhist monks and widely discussed in teashops, monasteries, and other
places of public discourse.

Importantly, such allegations have been expressed publicly
and privately by members of the highest political offices. For instance, the
director of President Thein Sein’s office and a graduate of the
military’s elite Defense Services Academy, Zaw Htay (also known as Hmuu
Zaw), posted inflammatory remarks on Facebook, which have since been removed.
He wrote:

It is heard that Rohingya Terrorists of the so-called
Rohingya Solidarity Organization are crossing the border and getting into the
country with the weapons. That is Rohingyas from other countries are coming
into the country. Since our Military has got the news in advance, we will
eradicate them until the end! I believe we are already doing it. ...We
don’t want to hear any humanitarian issues or human rights from others.
Besides, we neither want to hear any talk of justice nor want anyone to teach
us like a saint.[26]

The “Rathedaung Statement,” which attendees approved
and then released after the meeting, espoused arguments promoting ethnic
cleansing. It calls for the establishment of a “rule to control the birth
rate of the Muslim Bengali community living in Arakan”; it advocates
forced relocation by demanding the government “remove some Bengali
villages located near Sittwe University and beside traffic communication roads
throughout Arakan State”; and it expresses opposition to any
reintegration plans that would “put Buddhist and Muslim
people together.”[27]
Furthermore, the statement calls for a “peoples’ militia in all
ethnic villages along the border and [for the government] to supply
sophisticated arms to the people’s militia.”[28]
The statement calls for strict adherence to the 1982 Citizenship Law, which effectively
prevents Rohingya from obtaining Burmese citizenship.[29] The
Rathedaung statement was sent to President Thein Sein, leaders in parliament,
and the presidential commission established to investigate the situation in
Arakan State.[30]

Members of the Arakanese sangha and RNDP have also
called for changes to the demographic makeup of Arakan State and Burma, such as
the expulsion of all Rohingya from the country, in interviews with the
international media. For instance, Thein Tun Aye, a representative of the RNDP
told BBC television in November that all Rohingya are illegal immigrants from
Bangladesh and must be deported: “Their fathers and forefathers are
illegal immigrants, so we cannot accept them,” he said.[31] The
monk Ashin Sandarthiri likewise told BBC that Rohingya have no right to stay in
Burma: “Around the world there are many Muslim countries. They should go
there. The Muslim countries will take care of them. They should go to countries
with the same religion.”[32]

Impact of Economic Isolation

Several Rohingya explained to Human Rights Watch how
Buddhist monks were able to isolate their communities by putting pressure on
the Arakanese population. A Rohingya fisherman, 30, from Pauktaw said,
“The monks came and beat the Arakanese who were secretly giving us food.
That was on October 9. They had bamboo sticks and were beating them near our
neighborhood.”[33]

Another Rohingya man said: “There were monks in front
of the village. When they were there we couldn’t go out and nothing could
come in. I remembered one of the monks, his right hand is immobile. He is very
active in Pauktaw. He leads everything; he guided the monks and people.”[34]

In June, following the circulation of statements from local
monks’ associations, a displaced Rohingya man, 42, told the media,
“Most of the Arakanese are now refusing to sell food to the
Muslims.”[35]

The Economist reported that an Arakanese man was
killed in late October by members of his community after it was discovered that
he sold large quantities of rice to Rohingya in Mrauk-U Township.[36]

Several Rohingya also explained the efforts of the RNDP in
isolating the Muslim population. A Rohingya, 27, from Pauktaw explained the
involvement of RNDP leaders:

The RNDP leaders were giving the orders to the people. In
one group there were 20 people [Arakanese] and they were ordered to secure the
area around our village. If any food entered to the Rohingya part of the
village they would stop it. “If any food comes, take it, crush it, and
destroy it,” I heard them say. They [RNDP] put a notice up on the corner
of the road in front of the food market with orders saying no one can allow any
food to reach the Rohingya village. On that paper it said that any Arakanese
taking money from the Rohingya for rice or other things would be killed. It
said there was a 100,000 Kyat reward for those who catch any Arakanese
supplying food to the Rohingya. It was signed by RNDP party member [name
withheld] of the RNDP party in Pauktaw. Other names on the paper were [names
withheld].[37]

Four other Rohingya from Pauktaw also told Human Rights
Watch that they had seen the same RNDP notice, signed by leaders of the local
RNDP chapter.[38]
These efforts led to serious humanitarian problems and economic shortages in
the village.[39]

A displaced Rohingya man working to provide aid to other
IDPs told Human Rights Watch:

Our life was safer during the military government. When the
democratic government got power [in 2011], the RNDP gained power here and now
we are facing a problem to our existence. The RNDP are so ambitious to eliminate
Islam from this land. They want only a Buddhist Arakanese republic.[40]

Arakanese communities are also isolating Rohingya who had
not been displaced. Aung Mingalar is the last remaining Muslim neighborhood in
Sittwe, currently surrounded by a population of Arakanese who have been hostile
to its Muslim residents who survived the attacks in June. The area is home to
8000 Muslims and is currently guarded by both the army and police.

This area is very small but extremely populated. It is very
difficult to eat. We have no food. The whole area is surrounded by Arakanese
people. If we go outside, we are afraid we’ll be killed by the Arakanese,
so no one dares to go out. No one has delivered food. The government has not
given us anything so far.[41]

In November a prominent resident of Aung Mingalar told Human
Rights Watch:

We will try to get rice from the Arakanese people but that
is unsafe. We estimate we can get 20 bags per day but that amount won’t
be sufficient for the population here. We need 400 bags for 10 days. The UN has
not given any aid to us since June. We only want permission to bring food from
outside to Aung Mingalar. The Arakanese attacked the food trucks and looted
them several times. … When the rickshaw [small motor vehicle] tries to
come with food and other supplies, they looted them and took everything, and in
some cases they beat the Arakanese driver.[42]

In the months after the June violence, the Arakanese
community increasingly organized to forcibly remove Rohingya from their areas.
On October 18, just days before violence renewed in the state, an All-Arakanese
Monks’ Solidarity Conference, attended by the senior monks in the
township, was held at Dakaung monastery in Sittwe. A public statement by the
monks following this meeting states their intent to “expose sympathizers
of Bengali kalars as national traitors along with photos and spread the
information to every township.”[43]
The group called for the government to “quickly implement” President
Thein Sein’s proposal to UNHCR in July, which was interpreted as a call
to expel all Rohingya from the country.[44] (As discussed in
chapter V of this report, Thein Sein called for “illegal” Rohingya
to be sent to “third countries,” but given the lack of citizenship
for nearly all Rohingya in Burma, the statement was interpreted as a call to
expel all Rohingya from Burma). Noteworthy is the statement’s call for Arakanese
to join forces with each other between townships: “When there is a problem
in one township [with the Rohingya], other townships are to help solve
it.”[45]

Numerous Rohingya told Human Rights Watch that when violence
started three days later, the Arakanese who attacked them were not familiar to
them, leading them to believe their assailants came from outside their area. For
instance, in Pauktaw, local Rohingya fishermen alleged that thousands of
Arakanese with various weapons came by sea on boats to attack their villages. One
Rohingya fisherman, 30, told Human Rights Watch what he saw on October 23:

With their fists in the air they shouted, “Victory! Victory!”
They came from all directions. There were 10 to 15 boats that brought people to
our village on that day. ... It seemed like they were bringing Arakanese from
outside the area. They carried knives and other weapons. When they reached the
jetty they came directly to our village. There are not that many people in
Pauktaw, so many probably came from outside.[46]

Response of Security Forces and
Officials in Arakan State

International praise followed the Burmese government’s
handling of the violence between Arakanese and Rohingya in Arakan State in June.
The EU on June 11 welcomed the Burmese authorities’ “measured
response.” A spokesperson for the EU’s high representative on foreign
affairs, Catherine Ashton, said: "We believe that the security forces are
handling this difficult intercommunal violence in an appropriate way. We
welcome the priority which the Myanmar government is giving to dealing with all
ethnic conflicts."[47] The
US likewise praised the government’s response, saying, “The
government is trying to help everybody who needs it whether that is Rakhine
Buddhists or Muslims."[48]

The reality was very different. Human Rights Watch research
found that during the period following the violence and abuses in June, some
security forces in Arakan State – rather than responding to the growing
campaign to force Rohingya out – were destroying mosques, effectively
blocking humanitarian aid to Rohingya populations, conducting violent mass
arrests, and at times acting alongside Arakanese to forcibly displace Muslims.[49]

Nonetheless, some security forces stepped in to minimize
harm to threatened groups. Human Rights Watch observed army units deployed by
the government to maintain order that played a positive role in stemming
violence in Sittwe.[50]
We witnessed army personnel escorting Rohingya through Sittwe in late June to
collect their belongings before returning to displaced person sites – though
we were unable to determine whether this was done as part of normal duties or
for payment, as frequently occurs. In June, one Rohingya told Human Rights
Watch, “The police are Arakanese, too. They hate us. The army is Burmese
[ethnic Burman]. They are protecting us.”[51]

The media, several ambassadors and visiting foreign
officials were able to go to Arakan State to talk with local residents and
internally displaced persons.[52]
The then minister of border affairs, Thein Htay, met with numerous diplomats
and officials. President Thein Sein issued a report to parliament in August
that criticized local forces in Arakan State for
fueling the violence, saying, “Political parties, some monks, and some
individuals are increasing the ethnic hatred.”[53] On
August 17, the president also established a 27-member commission “to
reveal the truth behind the unrest” and “find solutions for
communities with different religious beliefs to live together in
harmony.” This was followed by a workshop in Naypyidaw on September 22-23
on the situation in Arakan State, organized by the Ministry of Border Affairs,
UN agencies, and the Myanmar Development and Resources Institute.[54]

These efforts were patently
insufficient to stop the visible and mounting pressure in Arakan State to drive
Rohingya and other Muslims out of the country.

Mass Arrests and Ill-Treatment of
Detainees

Between June and October, Lon Thein riot police, Nasaka
border forces, and the Burmese army systematically and violently rounded up
Rohingya residents in villages around Maungdaw Township in northern Arakan
State, and transferred them to unknown locations. In some cases, security
forces arrived with lists of people alleged to have been involved in riots in
Maungdaw on June 8-10. Rohingya told Human Rights Watch that these arrests caused
widespread fear among Rohingya populations throughout the state.[55]

Rohingya said that following the violence in June 2012,
state security forces raided Muslim homes and villages in Maungdaw Township, at
times shooting at villagers, looting homes and businesses, and rounding up people
of all ages. Those arrested included Rohingya teenagers and children as young
as 8.[56]

Ethnic Arakanese were also arrested. The government of Burma
told Human Rights Watch it has prosecuted 1,158 people in Arakan State since
June 2012, including 875 “Bengalis,” 245 Arakanese, and 38 from
other ethnic groups.[57] The
authorities did not, however, provide or publish a detailed list of those who were
detained or their whereabouts or information on the nature of any charges
against them.

Several UN bodies expressed concern about the treatment of
Rohingya detainees. The UN special rapporteur on human rights in Burma, who
visited Rohingya detainees in late July, reported that he was “concerned
about their treatment during detention and about the denial of their due
process rights.”[58]
UN OCHA’s “Rakhine Response Plan” stated: “Reports of
missing individuals and incidents of ill-treatment in detention have also been
recorded.”[59]
A UN official with firsthand knowledge of conditions in detention in Arakan
State told Human Rights Watch:

There is torture, humiliating torture. They are kept
without food, water, clothes, in very bad conditions. They could be forced to
work, to do things against their will. That is the reason why people are so
afraid of being detained. Even in the process of detention, beatings can start
immediately, even in the street…people die from beatings.[60]

The authorities transported some of those taken into custody
to other townships, such as Sittwe and Buthidaung, and most were denied access
to lawyers and family members.[61]
An unknown number remain in detention today. Exacerbating unlawful treatment are
the discriminatory restrictions on Rohingya – including a ban on
ownership of mobile phones, limiting their ability to contact detained family
members, and a requirement that they seek official permission to travel between
townships to detention facilities where their relatives are being held.[62]

The authorities appeared to target well-educated Rohingya
for arbitrary arrest, detention, and torture. A well-educated Rohingya man was
apprehended by Burmese intelligence services in June and interrogated for 19
consecutive days, deprived of sleep, hooded for extended periods, and
threatened with physical harm.[63]
Authorities accused him of violating the Electronics Transactions Act by
communicating abroad about the violence in June.[64] He
has since been released and the charges against him have been dropped.

A prominent case involved Dr. Tun Aung, 65, a Rohingya
medical doctor who is chairman of the Islamic Religious Affairs Council in
Maungdaw, whom the authorities arrested on June 11 in Maungdaw town. According
to well-placed local sources,the authorities had enlisted him as a
prominent local figure to help defuse rising tensions in the area.[65]
Three days earlier there had been rioting, arson, and violence by Rohingya
against Arakanese in Maungdaw, which was followed by several days of
state-sponsored attacks against Rohingya.[66] Dr. Tun Aung and his
family had sought refuge on June 8 in the Maungdaw office of UNHCR. On June 11,
most of the UNHCR staff members were evacuated because of threats of violence
from local Arakanese mobs. That day, UNHCR arranged for authorities to give Dr.
Tun Aung and his family safe passage to their home. Instead, authorities took
him to the immigration office in Kyi Kan Pyin, a neighboring township. There he
was arrested, charged with various offenses, and transferred to Sittwe.
Authorities refused to give him access to a lawyer of his choosing. In November
he was tried and sentenced to 11 years in prison.[67] He
suffers from several medical conditions and there is a concern he is not
receiving adequate medical treatment.[68]

Authorities also arrested Dr. Tun Aung’s daughter, Mya
Nandar Aung, 37, a former employee of UNHCR, on grounds that she posed a threat
to national security under the Emergency Provisions Act. When she was arrested
at the Sittwe airport on June 10, she had in her possession materials from
UNHCR that included standard lists of institutions in northern Arakan State
that were relevant to her work. The material was confiscated and deemed a
threat to national security. Authorities dropped the charges against her due to
lack of sufficient evidence and released her in December 2012.

Authorities also arrested Mya Nandar Aung’s husband,
Maung Maung Than, another former employee of UNHCR, in Rangoon on June 15, and
charged him with violating the Electronics Transactions Act because he
allegedly distributed information about the June violence using electronic
media. Maung Maung Than was held in the Mingalar Taung Nyunt Township court,
Rangoon, and was released in December, officially due to a lack of evidence.

Following the June violence, authorities also arrested a
total of 14 staff members of the UN and international NGOs but the authorities
did not release specific information about the charges against them. All
persons arrested were Rohingya, and at least five remain in prison. UN agencies
and international NGOs have been continually denied access to their detained
staff members and the Burmese government has provided only minimal information
about the charges against them.[69]

On August 17, 2012, authorities released six of the
detainees, including two UN staff and four international NGO staff. On August
24, the Maungdaw court sentenced three UN staff members for crimes including
promoting hatred between Buddhists and Muslims and participating in arson
attacks, and ordered them imprisoned for between two and six years, but on
August 28 they were pardoned by President Thein Sein.

The UN special rapporteur on human rights in Burma, Tomas
Quintana, was permitted to visit one UN staff member in Insein prison in
Rangoon, and five in Buthidaung prison in northern Arakan State. He reported
that he “was concerned about their treatment during detention and about
the denial of their due process rights.”[70] On September 25 he
called for their immediate release and a review of their cases.[71] On
February 16, 2013, he reiterated the call for their “immediate and
unconditional release,” saying “the charges against them are
unfounded and ... their due process rights have been denied.”[72]
Quintana was also able to visit Dr. Tun Aung in Sittwe prison, and on February
16 he called for his immediate release, adding that this was necessary for the
government to demonstrate that it “has made a break from the past and no
longer locks people up for political reasons.[73]

Other educated, displaced Rohingya in Arakan State who speak
English – and can thus communicate to a broader international audience if
given the opportunity – told Human Rights Watch they have been
interrogated by the police since June 2012. One such Rohingya man said:

I have not committed any crime. Why do they have to
question me? I am worried and also my family is worried. I think they are making
a report and want to mention my name in it. I think they are building a case
against me. I am telling the truth to the world. The truth is not a crime.[74]

Destruction of Homes and Mosques

After the June violence forced communities of Muslims to
flee from Sittwe, local authorities moved in to demolish remaining structures,
including home and mosques. Government officials and Arakanese cooperated in
the destruction of structurally sound buildings. A Rohingya woman from Sittwe
told Human Rights Watch:

Many houses were left standing but they were destroyed by
the government, not the Arakanese. There was nothing wrong with our house. It
was still there [after the violence]. But on another day, [our friend] went to
the neighborhood, and it was gone. We got this picture from a soldier [shows a
picture of the house standing amid ashes and government officials.]. They used
the bulldozers one or two days after the fires. We tried to call the landline
phone at our neighbor’s house and an Arakanese answered. After we left
all the Arakanese came and took our things and properties.[76]

Another Rohingya man told Human Rights Watch about an attack
on a mosque in Sittwe on the morning of June 29 that, until that time, had been
unaffected by the sectarian violence. He said:

The municipal people [local government employees] were
destroying the Rohingya mosque at the corner of Merchant Street and Aung Htaw
Oo Street. That mosque is ours and they are destroying it. They were government
and fire brigade and other people from Sittwe. They are still destroying that
mosque.[77]

A prominent Buddhist monk in Sittwe repeated to Human Rights
Watch a widely held rumor among Arakanese that mosques in the state were
militant outposts in which the Rohingya stored weapons – thus attempting
to justify their destruction:

In the villages, the Arakanese don’t have guns, but
every mosque has guns. The government knows this news, and this time the
government is angry, so the government bulldozed the mosques everywhere in
downtown Sittwe. They know every mosque has boxes of guns.[78]

According to news reports, the authorities demolished five structurally
sound mosques in Sittwe town.[79]
The attorney general of Arakan State, Hla Thein, said the damaged buildings
were removed because they were “not good to look at” and would
inflame angry feelings.[80]
The UN resident coordinator in Burma, Ashok Nigam, visited Sittwe after the
June violence and was told that the areas had been cleared for “town
planning.”[81] Human
Rights Watch confirmed the destruction of at least nine mosques in the area of
Sittwe.[82]

A mosque in Pauktaw that had been defaced with anti-Rohingya
graffiti was torn down.[83]
Four of the five mosques in Kyauk Pyu were destroyed.[84] Kyauk
Pyu’s main mosque, which was burned but not structurally harmed, was among
those demolished.[85]
In Kyauk Pyu and other areas, witnesses told Human Rights Watch that when
attacks resumed in October, their mosques were one of the first places to be
attacked by Arakanese mobs.[86]

A Rohingya man from Sittwe researched and produced a
detailed list of 28 mosques that were partially or fully destroyed in Sittwe
Township since June. Although Human Rights Watch cannot independently confirm
the exact number of mosques affected or the findings, the individual stated he
had visited each site, described the sites in detail, and provided written
records.[87]

Other Rohingya said that authorities and Arakanese destroyed
mosques and religious schools in other parts of the state, including at least
six mosques and six Islamic schools in Minbya Township.[88]

Collusion and Coercion to
Forcibly Displace Muslims

Some state security forces colluded with Arakanese in the
forced displacement of Muslim populations in June and in the weeks leading up
to the second wave of violence in late October.[89]Muslim residents in Sittwe and northern Arakan State
told Human Rights Watch that in June they witnessed groups of armed Arakanese
villagers traveling together with police during attacks against Rohingya
communities that led to their displacement.

Immediately prior to
the onset of violence in October, local government officials, members of the RNDP,
and Arakanese community members held public meetings at which they openly discussed
forcibly displacing the local Rohingya population. Rohingya and Kaman community
leaders told Human Rights Watch that they attended such meetings in Pauktaw and
Kyauk Pyu in which the outcome was a decision that the Muslim population should
leave the area. The Rohingya and Kaman Muslims who were present at these
meetings said they were unable to provide input – they were simply told it
was in their best interest to move away.[90]

A Rohingya fisherman from Pauktaw said:

Local Arakanese told us to leave. They said, “You go
to Thaychaung [IDP camp].” The township administration officer said this
too. He is Burmese. We had a meeting [before the onset of violence in late
October] and the township official said openly that we should all go to Sittwe
in a group, and that he would supply us with gasoline for our boats. He is a
three-star township officer, and a member from the RNDP. ... After they told us
villagers to go to Sittwe, they didn’t give us a chance to reply. We had
no say on this issue. The authorities sold us with three gallons of gasoline
for each boat. We all left on the same day, on 10 [large] boats and on 15 small
boats. It was the township administration authority controlling the gasoline.
We had to pay 4000-kyat per gallon – we could not go to the market
ourselves.[91]

Another Rohingya fisherman, 44, from Pauktaw said:

The township council sold us 60 liters of fuel so we could
leave. We came to Sittwe to save our lives. The situation was getting worse day
by day, we reported it to the local authorities and they asked us what we
wanted to do. We said to the authorities we wanted to save our lives. The
authorities told us to leave. [A local leader] of the RNDP said that if we did
not leave our place we would be killed and our villages would be burned. Just
after we left from our place [by sea] we could see it [our village] was already
on fire, we could see the smoke and flames.[92]

A Rohingya man from Pauktaw who left his village on October
24 said:

On June 13 just a few houses were burned. The rest were
burned this time. Before we left our village, the commander of the township
police department said to us, “There will be more pressure on you and we
cannot save you, so you have to decide what you will do for yourself. You
cannot save your life here.” We had a meeting with the village elders and
collected money, and with that money the police brought us 17 gallons of diesel
oil so we could leave.[93]

A Rohingya fisherman, 27, from Pauktaw said: “There
were 2,700 Rohingya in our village. I left on October 23. Our whole village was
kicked out. Lon Thein and the army arrived at that time. A [local] government
official sold us gasoline for our boat engine.”[94]

In Kyauk Pyu, following the outbreak of violence elsewhere
in the state in June, local villagers and government established a
“peacekeeping committee” in the town comprising Muslims and
Buddhists. In October, when Kaman Muslims told the local government about their
concern of an imminent attack by hostile Arakanese, the authorities called a
meeting of the peacekeeping committee. A Kaman Muslim man told Human Rights
Watch:

The [local government] authorities called a meeting with
the peacekeeping committee at 2 p.m. [on October 22] at the township
administrative office. In the meeting, the [township] administrator said, “You
should save your village and quarter and save yourself.” An Arakanese man
stood up and said, “This is not your state. This state belongs to the
Arakanese. You should move from the state. You are a guest so you have to go to
a guest place.” Those of us [Kaman] who attended the meeting had no
chance to speak in the meeting. A police officer said at that meeting to the administrative
officer that they could not take responsibility for the Muslims in Kyauk Pyu,
and the administrative officer said he would inform the military to take
responsibility for the town. After finishing this meeting, the administrative
officer informed the army and the army came.[95]

Restrictions on Humanitarian Aid: June-October 2012

UN agencies and international humanitarian organizations
have long operated in the predominantly Muslim townships of northern Arakan
State, providing lifesaving aid to hundreds of thousands of Rohingya.[96]Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), for example,
has worked in Arakan State since 1994, focusing on primary health care,
“with a specific emphasis on reproductive health, malaria, HIV, and
tuberculosis.”[97] In 2011, MSF conducted 487,000 consultations and has provided ART treatment to over 600 AIDS patients.[98]

On June 10, when the attacks against Muslims quickly
escalated, security concerns forced international humanitarian organizations
to evacuate their humanitarian workers from northern Arakan State and Sittwe
to Rangoon. However, local Rohingya staff could not be evacuated because of
Burmese government restrictions on their freedom of movement.

For a period of time in June, after the violence, the
government prevented all aid agencies from returning to Arakan State. A
senior aid official told Human Rights Watch: “One NGO submitted a
formal request [in June] to [the government] asking for travel permits for
staff. In response to that message, they copied the UN, and said in the last
sentence that international staff can’t go until there is peace and
tranquility.”[99]

Between June and October, the authorities also denied
permission for the resumption of specific aid programs by several
organizations, including MSF. Food aid, primary health care, emergency
medical assistance, education, and other areas of humanitarian programming
were cancelled. This had a pernicious effect, exacerbating the isolation of
Muslim populations and contributing to pressures on them to leave.

According to OCHA, some partners, including the World Food
Programme, the UN refugee agency and some NGOs, were able to resume some of
their regular activities since the end of September, but many were not been
able to do so.[100] The cuts to MSF’s programs, for example,
meant that “thousands of patients benefiting from longer-term primary
health care programs” were cut off from medical services.[101]

In some areas, state security forces, including the army,
did not facilitate access for Rohingya cut off from food and other basic
needs. Rohingya stated that immediately after the violence in June, security
forces guarding their neighborhoods and IDP camps helped them obtain basic
necessities, but that assistance only lasted a few weeks.[102]A 44-year-old Rohingya fisherman from
Pauktaw said:

Day by day we became very weak because we didn’t
have any food, we couldn’t buy any goods. We were isolated. At one
point the military provided some food but soon after they stopped and
didn’t provide anything. At our weakest the Arakanese attempted to attack
us again [in October].[103]

II. Coordinated Attacks and
Abuses Against Muslims in Arakan State: October 2012

My mother was stabbed with a knife on her head and on her
neck. She died from bleeding too much.

Fifteen policemen were on
guard behind my house. We thought that because of all the guards there would
not be violence or fires. But at 7:30 p.m. the Arakanese came and set fire to a
house next to mine. They had bottles of petrol. In that group there were more
than 500 Arakanese, at least. The police did nothing. They didn’t fire a
gun – they did nothing for us.[104]

—Kaman Muslim man, 49, from Kyauk Pyu, Arakan State,
November 2012

After months of rising tensions and visible planning by
monks, political party members and Arakanese communities, on October 22, 2012,
the predictable happened: mobs of thousands of Arakanese with weapons descended
on Muslim communities in nine townships throughout the state. Carrying machetes, swords, spears, homemade guns, Molotov
cocktails, and other weapons, sizable groups of Arakanese men simultaneously descended
on Muslim villages in several townships in a coordinated fashion. In
some areas they arrived by foot, in others by a makeshift armada of small boats,
braced to attack.

In many areas, the groups
targeted the local mosque first, and then nearby homes, easily flammable structures
of bamboo and wood. The burning of entire villages to the ground was a signature
tactic of these attacks. Plumes of smoke quickly dotted the sky. The assailants
killed an unknown number of Muslim men, women, and children. The sparse
security forces that were stationed in these areas either failed to intervene
or participated in the violence against Muslims.

Far from being a brief flash of violence, the carnage of
October 22 lasted over a week in 9 of the state’s 17 townships: Minbya,
Myebon, Mrauk-U, Pauktaw, Kyauk Pyu, Ramree, Kyauktaw, Rathedaung, and Thandwe.
Most of these areas had not experienced violence in June.

Attacks on villages began as early as 5:30 in the morning. Residents
from six villages in Mrauk-U Township alone, all attacked on October 23, said most
attacks were long and drawn-out, lasting several hours.

That the attacks were planned and well-coordinated is
evident in that many occurred the same day – and often the same time of
day – in townships separated by considerable distance. For example,
crowds of Arakanese descended on villages in Mrauk-U, Minbya, Kyauk Pyu, and
Pauktaw townships all on October 23.

Many Rohingya reported that Arakanese coming to their
villages were not local persons – because they did not look familiar, and
because the size of the crowds exceeded the local Arakanese population. They suspected
these Arakanese came from other townships.

Unlike in June, the Arakanese attackers also targeted Kaman
Muslims residing in the still impoverished but relatively prosperous township
of Kyauk Pyu – a coastal area of multi-billion dollar oil and gas investments
and relatively high property values. The Kaman are citizens of Burma and
legally recognized by the central government as an ethnic group. This ancestral
home was destroyed in October and Kaman told Human Rights Watch they have no
hopes of returning.

The violence that week displaced over 40,000 Muslims and a
very small number of Arakanese. According to the
government, since June over 115,000 people have been internally displaced in
Arakan State, nearly all of whom are Rohingya.[105]
Others estimate the number of displaced persons exceeds 126,000.[106]
These estimates do not include the tens of thousands of Rohingya who have fled
Burma in rickety boats, seeking asylum in Thailand, Malaysia, or Bangladesh.

While the figures of the
displaced reveal the serious humanitarian crisis at hand – and clarify
who is most vulnerable – they do not address the commission of acts that
led to the displacement, nor the state’s support for those acts.[107]

Human Rights Watch has
obtained new evidence of human rights violations accompanying the October 2012 violence
in Arakan State. This includes several eyewitness accounts of a massacre of at
least 70 Rohingya on October 23 in Yan Thei village, Mrauk-U Township, in which
security forces responded poorly, some actively colluding with the attacking
Arakanese, as well as evidence of other unlawful killings.

State security forces also
used unlawful force while conducting large-scale security operations in the
state. In some instances, there is evidence that security forces opened fire on
Rohingya who were not threatening them.

Massacre in Yan Thei Village

At approximately 6:30 a.m. on October 23, several thousand
Arakanese armed with spears, swords, knives, homemade guns, sticks, metal rods,
Molotov cocktails, and other weapons approached the predominantly Rohingya
Muslim village of Yan Thei in Mrauk-U Township. According to Rohingya
survivors, only five to ten Lon Thein riot police had been deployed to protect
the village despite ample warning that an organized attack by Arakanese was
likely. When the Arakanese appeared, the small contingent of riot police put a
red flag in the ground, fired shots in the air, and told each side no one was
to cross the flag. When the Arakanese disregarded that order and attacked the
village, the riot police did nothing to stop them.

Immediately prior to the Arakanese attack on Yan Thei, the
Lon Thein squad had disarmed the Rohingya villagers of sticks and other
rudimentary weapons they were holding, despite thousands of Arakanese with
weapons approaching the village. They apparently made no effort to place
themselves between the villagers and the attackers or lead the villagers to a
safer location. A 25-year-old Rohingya man in Yan Thei told Human Rights Watch:

We had no arms. We only had wooden sticks, but the Lon
Thein took them. First we went outside the village [when thousands of Arakanese
approached], and then the Lon Thein told us to go back inside the village and
then they took the sticks from our hands. First the [Lon Thein] security told
us, “Do not do anything, we will protect you, we will save you,” so
we trusted them. But later they broke that promise. The Arakanese beat and
killed us very easily. The security did not protect us from them.[108]

Another Rohingya villager described what happened:

Many people came. They were Arakanese from outside the
village. When they arrived in our village, the [Lon Thein] security opened fire
in the air toward the Arakanese but they came again and again and finally
burned down the village. After Lon Thein [initially] fired their guns, they
took weapons from us and [the Lon Thein] stopped for two hours and went away.
After two hours, they [the Lon Thein] came back and attacked us too.[109]

A 30-year-old Rohingya man who survived the attacks also alleged
the Lon Thein participated in the attacks against them: “Lon Thein shot
at us. They were accompanied by the Arakanese. I saw at least seven or ten Lon
Thein holding guns. The nearby Arakanese villagers also came after us. There
was nothing we could do.”[110]
Human Rights Watch was unable to confirm if Lon Thein personnel directly
committed killings in Yan Thei.

The same man said that the Lon Thein initially directed some
of the Rohingya to leave the village as it was being attacked but later failed
to protect them when the Arakanese assailants found them:

When the Arakanese first attacked [the village], the
security personnel took some of us outside the village, near the cemetery. When
they [Arakanese] were burning down our houses they [Arakanese] didn’t
attack us, but after burning down the houses, they [Arakanese] attacked us in
the cemetery with knives. They killed so many, more than 70 of us from the
village, including women and children. Another 25 people were injured and are
still here [outside Yan Thei village]. Some were hit on the head [with
machetes] and some on their sides and hands.[111]

A 25-year-old Rohingya man said:

The policemen were telling us to go back in to the village.
At that time the Arakanese were coming toward us [from the village]. We were
trapped. ... First they [police and army] said they would protect us but when
the violence started they took sides with the Arakanese people. ... When the
Arakanese set fire to our village, they [the Arakanese] were using [slingshots]
on the people too. One of my brothers was hit with a metal arrow. We went to
help my brother and then some Arakanese cut the throats of two from our group.
One man’s name is Mohammed Ahmin. He was 45 years old. He was the village
head. I saw everything. I was very close, just a few feet away. I lost two
other family members [in the violence in Yan Thei] and buried them.[112]

A 24-year-old Rohingya man said:

There were so many Arakanese coming to our village, from
every side. They surrounded the village. The Arakanese stormed our village and
started setting fire to our houses and threatening to kill us. Women and
children fled the village first and some of the Arakanese chased them and
killed them while some others Arakanese were still in the village, burning
houses down. At least 30 children were killed, 25 women, and 10 men.[113]

Several Rohingya and Arakanese said the security forces did
not intervene to stop violence until it had calmed in the early evening, after
a full day of bloodshed. Rohingya villagers said reinforcements from the army
did not arrive in the village until after 5 p.m., despite the attacks beginning
in the morning and continuing all day.[114]

Another villager said: “I saw so many people killed,
and so many houses burned. We were all running. The whole day was full of
violence.”[115]

An Arakanese woman, 68, from Yan Thei said: “I
didn’t see any police or army. I didn’t see any soldiers when the
violence started.”[116]
Another Arakanese woman added, “On that day the police or military were
not stopping the violence.”[117]

Several Arakanese who did not participate in the violence
told Human Rights Watch that when they fled their villages in Mrauk-U Township
– some by van – they encountered Muslims while they were en route
to Mrauk-U town, who fired slingshots at them. Again, they said, there was no
security.[118]

While the Arakanese involved in attack on Yan Thei appeared
to number in the thousands, assisted by riot police, the Burmese government has
reportedly arrested only six Arakanese men for their role in the violence. By
most recent accounts all are detained in Sittwe still awaiting charges.[119]

Several Arakanese from Yan Thei were killed or injured
during the violence, while the remainder of the Arakanese villagers are now
displaced, living in a Buddhist monastery in Mrauk-U town. A displaced
Arakanese woman told Human Rights Watch that a group from the monastery visited
Yan Thei with security provided by the army and police to collect the bodies of
the Arakanese killed.[120]

Records from the village head seen by Human Rights Watch placed
the number of Rohingya killed at 52. Two witnesses believe the number was more
than 70.

Killings by Security Forces

In June and October, Burmese security forces killed numerous
Muslims attempting to extinguish fires or otherwise limit damage to their homes.
This suggests that the authorities were willing to use lethal force against
Rohingya and Kaman Muslims who were trying to prevent a forced population
transfer.

A Kaman Muslim, 31, told Human Rights Watch that he
witnessed the police open fire on a group of Muslims in Kyauk Pyu on October 23
in the presence of army soldiers who did nothing:

I saw three people hit by bullets from the police. They
were seriously wounded and eventually died. ... They were standing right in
front of me trying to stop the fires. They had water buckets. When I was trying
to pour water on the fire, a man next to me was shot in the back of the head.[121]

The man said those killed were Muhammad Rafi, 21, Ali Khan,
16, and Ibrahim, 17.

A 52-year-old Kaman Muslim shopkeeper from Kyauk Pyu
witnessed the shootings as well and said:

Three boys were shot in front of me. They died and we took
the bodies to the mosque. It was the police who shot them. When they were shot
they were trying to stop the fires near the mosque. They were shot in the head,
the chest, behind the ear.[122]

One side of the road was Arakanese and one side was Muslim.
They [the Arakanese] came and set fire to the Muslim houses. We were trying to
extinguish the fires. When the houses were burning they came to our mosque.
They threw petroleum bottles [Molotov cocktails] at the mosque. Nearly 50 or 60
bottles were thrown. ... Some houses around the mosque also burned down. At
that time we gathered to defend ourselves against the Arakanese but the police
shot at us. Three died on the spot and another five were injured. I was near to
it, maybe 20 yards away. ... The police were the ones who fired their guns. The
army just watched.[123]

A Kaman man, 39, from Kyauk Pyu said that he witnessed the
killing of a teenage boy by the army on October 23:

I saw my neighbor Sicthu Myint shot by the army. He was
killed on the spot. He was 16 years old. I was standing in front of my house. I
heard the sound first and then I saw him fall down. I didn’t see exactly
which person shot him but the army was nearby, just across the street, in front
of him – they shot him.[124]

In Minbya Township, at least six Rohingya villages were
burned down. Tha Yet Oak village in Minbya Township – regarded as the
most prosperous Rohingya village in the state – is connected to a nearby
Arakanese village by a single road. On the morning of October 22, an estimated
3,000 Arakanese with various weapons approached Tha Yet Oak on the road. A
56-year-old Rohingya man said the violence began after morning prayers:

There were only five army soldiers in the [Arakanese
section of the] village. The Arakanese were coming and coming. First they
attacked and set fire to Khamal Ahmud’s house. Then they set fire to
Usman’s house, and then Nurul’s house. At that time, some other
Arakanese were attacking with [slingshots] and spears, so we fled to the
riverside. Seven people were injured. One had been shot. Seven were killed and
six children are still missing. I saw the Arakanese shoot guns with my own
eyes. The village is totally burned down.[125]

He and others initially fled to Mrauk-U Township until they
encountered ongoing attacks in another area of Mrauk-U Township, and turned
around.[126]

Witnesses also told us that in early October, Burmese
military personnel dumped the bodies of three Rohingya prisoners in an area
outside Ba Du Baw IDP camp, which local Rohingya buried in a single grave. They
said the bodies showed signs of torture. One of the witness, a Rohingya man,
48, said:

There were three dead bodies from the jail. We buried them.
The car was a military truck but the people in charge told us the bodies were
from the jail. One person's body was beaten and his ankle joint was very
dislocated. There was a large wound on the leg. The chest looked broken. It was
sunken in. There were bruises on all their faces.[127]

Arakanese assailants were among those killed in the
violence. In the Muslim quarter of Kyauk Pyu, near the seashore, significant
violence was directed at Kaman Muslims who were preparing to flee by boat. A
Kaman Muslim man, 49, estimates that nearly 2,000 Arakanese approached the
boats “and tried to attack” them as they were waiting for high tide
so their boats could depart. He said:

We also had weapons. There were nearly 300 of us men. We
got out of the boats and were waiting for the fight. At that time one Arakanese
man came alone towards us and our villagers chopped him to death. He died on
the spot. Another man also came towards us and we killed him too. Someone cut
his head off and a person from our village held it up and showed it to the
others [Arakanese]. At that time the army came and pointed their guns towards
us. They shot in the air and our people retreated to the boats.[128]

An Arakanese woman, 32, who was part of a small Arakanese minority
living in the predominantly Rohingya village of Purin in Mrauk-U Township,
described what happened when an Arakanese mob attacked the village:

Some Muslims were crawling through the paddy farms,
carrying homemade weapons, as the Arakanese people started coming to fight. One
Arakanese guy went close to those who were crawling in the paddies and they
attacked him, and started to hack his body with swords. I saw that when I was
on the way to find safety at the school.[129]

An Arakanese man in Mrauk-U Township told Human Rights Watch
that 16 Arakanese men had died in the violence in October but only 5 bodies
were recovered. He said that they knew who went into the village to
“fight” with the Rohingya, and they judged the number killed
according to who was unaccounted for after the violence.[130] This
was confirmed by other Arakanese.[131]

None of the eyewitnesses to the violence with whom we spoke said
the authorities had sought their testimony regarding killings. To date, the
government has done little to establish the identities of the deceased, or
interview witnesses to the killings, let alone to steps to hold perpetrators
accountable. Two Rohingya said they were interviewed by the presidential commission
to investigate the situation in Arakan State, but there is no evidence of any
ongoing inquiry into killings by state security forces.

In response to questions submitted to the government by
Human Rights Watch, the Ministry of Border Affairs claimed there were 211
deaths since June – 59 Arakanese and 152 Rohingya – and that it
determined that figure “by collecting information and data from both
sides of the conflicted parties and from townships and villages, ten households
and hospitals.”[132]

Government Failure to Protect

In October 2012, Burmese army and navy units in some
instances provided security for Rohingya and Kaman Muslims who were under
attack by Arakanese, or were fleeing violence.[133] Very
often, however, security was either inadequate or absent, security forces did
not intervene to stop the violence, or actively colluded with Arakanese
attackers.

Local authorities should have expected and planned for the
violence. According to Hla Thein of the National Democratic Party for
Development (NDPD), which enjoys support among Rohingya in northern Arakan
State, “There were [threats of violence] ahead of the riots [in October].
We knew Kyauk Pyu was going to burn and repeatedly warned concerned government
authorities about it but they kept on saying ‘We got it’ and then
the town was burned down.”[134]

In Minbya, Pauktaw, Mrauk-U, and Kyauk Pyu Townships,
security forces were largely absent. If present, they at most fired warning shots
in the air to stop approaching groups of Arakanese and then stepped aside. In several
reported cases, they actively participated in the violence.

As described above, on October 23 the security forces in Yan
Thei village disarmed the Muslim residents and then fired in the air as the
Arakanese mob approached before standing aside while the massacre took place. Some
members of the security forces directly participated in the day-long killing.[135]

More than 3,000 Arakanese came from three sides. There were
no Lon Thein and only a few military are stationed in Tha Yet Oak, in the
Arakanese village. There were no security personnel [based] in our Rohingya
village. At that time, an army man fired a warning shot in the air but the
Arakanese also shot into the air. They had guns, too.[136]

Muslim areas in Pauktaw were also under threat but little
government security was provided. When the threat of violence by groups of Arakanese
was brought to the attention of government officials during community meetings
in the months prior to the October attacks, Rohingya villagers said they were
simply told to prepare to flee. A Rohingya fisherman from Pauktaw said:

We had no security for our lives in our village. We tried
to stay there but it was impossible. The Arakanese were coming every night,
shouting and threatening to set fires. We reported it to military and police
security and they advised us that in these conditions we should not stay and we
should leave this place.[137]

A predominantly Kaman Muslim section of Kyauk Pyu town in
Kyauk Pyu Township was attacked by Arakanese with weapons on October 23 and 24.
A Kaman Muslim man said he witnessed the police kill three people. He said the
police and army failed to intervene when thousands of hostile Arakanese entered
his village. He said:

When the tensions were highest [on October 23] the police
and army did not come. Before, they came every day during the previous month,
but on that day they did not come. When the soldiers finally arrived in the
village, we asked for help for security, but they just stood along the side of
the street. They told everyone to come out of their houses. They said it was
not their problem where we would go – they just said we should go. I saw
maybe 20 police and 20 soldiers total. The Arakanese people were in the
thousands. The authorities had weapons and the Arakanese had sticks and knives
and other weapons. I saw some Arakanese carrying a few tanks of petrol. It was
before the fires started. The police and army did nothing.[138]

A Kaman man, 62, from Kyauk Pyu said:

The next day [October 24] at 5 a.m. more and more Arakanese
were gathering for a meeting and when dawn broke they entered into the Muslim
part of the village. At 7 a.m. I saw two Arakanese people and two army soldiers
walking together. They crossed in front of me. I asked the soldier if he had
any orders to protect the Muslim people. “Please be aware of your duty,
we are very weak,” I said. The soldier replied, “The only thing you
can do is pray to save your lives.”[139]

Another Kaman Muslim, 43, said: “I saw five or more army
soldiers in front of my fish shop. The whole village was burning. When I saw
the soldiers I thought they would help us, but they just shouted at us to get
out quickly.”[140]

During the violence in Kyauk Pyu, local security forces and groups
of Arakanese colluded in committing violent acts that forced the remaining
Kaman Muslims to flee. A Kaman man, 31, from Kyauk Pyu said:

On October 23 many Arakanese came into the village and
said, “This is not your place, this is our property because this country
is ours.” The military and police entered the village and said the same
things to us. They said we should go. ... The police and military came and told
people to come out of their house, and they said if we didn’t we’d
all be killed. They said they couldn’t provide us with security. At that
time, the Arakanese people had started setting fires. They set the mosque on
fire first and then the houses. ... And in the presence of the military and
police, they entered our homes and took what they wanted. Most of the people in
Kyauk Pyu possess property. They took our belongings and then set fires [to our
houses]. They [the authorities] didn’t take any action against them.[141]

Security forces also participated in confiscation of
property, particularly in Kyauk Pyu where the Kaman Muslim population was
relatively prosperous by local standards. A Kaman Muslim said:

The soldiers walked in front of my house and ordered us to
get out of our houses. Before setting fire to my house, they came and took all
my goods and property from my house. It was the Arakanese, police, and army. I
sent my family somewhere else for safety. When they were taking my property I
went to a nearby place to secretly watch what they were doing.[142]

A Rohingya man, 27, from Minbya articulated a common
sentiment among Muslims whom Human Rights Watch interviewed, saying: “We
cannot get any protection from police and very little from the army.”[143]

An Arakanese woman, 32, who is part of the small group of
Arakanese who live in the predominantly Muslim village of Purin in Mrauk-U
Township, said she did not participate in the violence: “When the unrest
started, during that time there was no security. One woman called by phone to
downtown. The police told us before that if violence started we should call
them, but they came very late. That is why people were killed.”[144]

Rohingya villagers fleeing Pauktaw on October 23 and 24
encountered Burmese navy ships at sea that provided them with temporary
protection overnight, including food and water, before permitting them to
continue their flight to Sittwe where they hoped to find a safe haven. Others,
however, explained that the navy told them they had no permission to travel
onward to Sittwe and sent them back to their villages – and into the
hands of their attackers. For instance, a Rohingya man from Pauktaw said:

When we left our village, we crossed near the navy and the navy
stopped us and sent us back toward our village. The navy showed us their guns
and said we weren’t allowed to go to Sittwe. After one night and one day
passed, we came to Sittwe. That time the navy didn’t stop us.[145]

At least 150 boats of Rohingya families fled the area of
Pauktaw. While security forces in Pauktaw and navy ships at sea facilitated the
flight of some who fled from Pauktaw, the Nasaka did not let them land once
they reached the shores of Sittwe, at the time the only location with official
IDP camps. A Rohingya fisherman said: “When we reached here at the beach,
the Nasaka and army arrived and pushed us back to the sea. We tried to force
our way on the shore but they wouldn’t let us come on shore.”[146]

Moreover, those who were ultimately granted permission by
navy ships to go to Sittwe were, upon arrival, kept isolated on beaches by
security forces that failed to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid and
subjected them to beatings.

Beatings and Other Abuses by
Security Forces

The security person said we could not stay and we had to
go, and they beat us with their gun barrels. They kicked us and beat us with
sticks, too. They beat us for nearly two hours. I am younger so I was behind
the village elders. First they kicked and beat the elders of the village.

—Rohingya
man, 27, Pauktaw, Arakan State, October 2012

Burmese security forces committed numerous abuses against
civilians during large-scale security operations in Maungdaw and surrounding
villages following the sectarian violence in June 2012.[147] No
action was taken against those responsible. After the violence in October 2012,
the security forces again committed serious violations against local
populations.

Thousands of Rohingya fled attacks by Arakanese in Pauktaw in
late October by taking boats to the coast near Sittwe. State security forces
prevented these Rohingya from entering the areas where official IDP camps were
located. Instead they forced them to remain in various coastal areas without
shelter or access to basic necessities for several weeks. During this time the
Rohingya were subject to beatings and other mistreatment by the security forces.

A 30-year-old Rohingya man who fled from Pauktaw told Human
Rights Watch that displaced people whom the security forces deemed to have
spent too much time in makeshift latrine areas – near an unofficial IDP
site outside Sittwe – were beaten:

One day [following the October violence] the troops beat up
five people here at the coconut garden [makeshift IDP site]. There are no
latrines so when we go to the toilet we have to cross the field. The security
accused those who went to the toilet of taking too much time and beat them up.
Two of them became unconscious. I saw it happen.[148]

A Rohingya man, 27, from Pauktaw said:

We had our boats and because of the heavy tide the boats
filled with water, so we had to empty them manually. We had to go and do that
every day. When I was doing that a Nasaka soldier with a rifle hit me with the butt.
I was hit here on the shoulder and it still is painful.[149]

There is evidence that the abuses continued well after the
October violence. On November 31, Police Battalion 12 moved approximately 250
Rohingya displaced persons who had constructed shelter near an area known as
the Old Bridge, located between IDP camps outside Sittwe. The authorities allegedly
moved the group to Sin Ta Maw, in Pauktaw Township, against their will, but
five families stayed behind. One woman in the group who had remained had given
birth less than two weeks before, and another was in the later stages of
pregnancy. The authorities returned the following day, December 1, and beat the
woman who had given birth and several others, according to aid workers.[150]
This attracted a crowd of Rohingya and then the police opened fire, wounding
several Rohingya. A Rohingya man present told Human Rights Watch:

The police and state government tried to evacuate some
people from near the Old Bridge to the Sin Ta Maw camp. ... The people
didn’t want to go to Sin Ta Maw so they didn’t want to go to the
army truck, and the police battalion opened fire on them. I saw at least two
men and one woman shot and injured by the bullets. They left the wounded behind
and just left.[151]

Human Rights Watch spoke to others who alleged that eight
Rohingya were wounded in the shooting and that the police left them behind.
However, we were unable to independently confirm the reasons why the
authorities were moving the displaced persons, or to where.[152]

Amateur video footage taken on October 23 and 24 shows
police and Arakanese casually standing together in areas of Kyauk Pyu while the
town is in flames. In some scenes Arakanese are throwing what appear to be
Molotov cocktails onto properties while security forces stand nearby. Muslims
attempt to extinguish fires at one end of a road while Arakanese, security
forces, and a fire truck all wait idly at the other end of the road. In one
scene, police appear to shoot directly into a small group of Rohingya, one of
whom has a slingshot, while Arakanese stand behind the police, watching.[153]

Since June 2012, the UN and its humanitarian partners in
Arakan State have also independently documented numerous human rights abuses
committed by the Burmese authorities against the Rohingya. These include forced
labor – for sentry duty, road maintenance, and “camp related
tasks” – and arbitrary detention, including of children below the
age of 16, and extortion.[154]

Satellite Imagery Showing the
Scope of the Destruction

The Burmese government claims that 10,100 private, public,
and religious buildings were burned or destroyed in Arakan State since June
2012, specifically 4,800 in June and 5,300 in October.[155]

Satellite images obtained by Human Rights Watch from merely
four of the nine townships that experienced violence in October 2012 – Pauktaw,
Kyauk Pyu, Myebon, and Mrauk-U – show 2,304 destroyed structures.
Satellite images of affected areas in Sittwe, depicting destruction that
occurred in June, show an additional 2,558 destroyed structures. In total, this
satellite imagery documents the near-total destruction of 4,862 structures in
27 unique zones of destruction. The area covers 348 acres of mostly residential
property in 5 of the 13 townships that experienced violence since June.

The areas of scorched earth captured in the imagery include
Narzi quarter in Sittwe, previously home to 10,000 mostly Rohingya Muslims and
the economic center of Sittwe; Yan Thei village, which was the site of a
massacre; and Kyauk Pyu, where those burned out were Kaman Muslims.

III. Mass Graves

I saw three trucks full of dead bodies, some wrapped in
tarpaulin. They were brought to the funeral ground here [Thackabyin Rd.]. ...The
smell was terrible.[156]

—Rohingya
man, displacement site, Sittwe, November 2012

In locations in Arakan State where
violence and abuses have occurred since June, community members told us that
state security forces have not provided information about the bodies they
collect. This is particularly true in cases implicating the security forces. The
failure to provide information about the bodies of victims of violence places a
great burden on their families and will hinder future efforts to provide
accountability and redress.

Human Rights Watch uncovered evidence
of four mass-grave sites in Arakan State, three dating from the immediate
aftermath of the June violence and one from the October violence. Rohingya men
who participated in digging mass graves told us that they did so under orders
from the authorities in four different areas: Yan Thei village in Mrauk-U
Township and at three different sites near the Ba Du Baw IDP camp outside Sittwe.
Several Rohingya said they had witnessed a large mass grave being dug by army
personnel outside Ba Du Baw IDP camp.

Mass Graves at Yan Thei Village, Mrauk-U Township

As reported earlier in the report, the Arakanese attack on Yan
Thei village on October 23 resulted in the deaths of at least 52 Rohingya,
according to local village-head records obtained by Human Rights Watch. Two
witnesses claim that at least 70 Rohingya died. On October 25, villagers began
digging graves for Rohingya killed in the massacre. Several told us they began
digging individual graves but police and army officials ordered them to dig
larger graves in the interest of time. A Rohingya man told Human Rights Watch:

That night [October 23], we could not collect the dead. We
collected them in the morning but we could not bury them. We had to wait one
day for [government] approval. Once we received permission we ... put three or
four bodies in one hole, and many more in other holes. ... The [larger] holes
we dug were 10 feet wide and several feet deep. We made at least one very big
hole and other smaller ones. At first we buried the bodies in single graves but
then the soldiers said we should dig bigger graves because single graves would
take too much time. They wanted it done quickly. It was both the police and
army who ordered us to dig bigger graves. They were watching over us.[157]

Another Rohingya man said he buried 61 people, and he
estimated that others later died from injuries, making a total of about 70
killed:

We dug the graves. We buried 11 men, 20 women, and nearly
30 children. At that time the children couldn’t escape with their
parents. All the children were killed by knife, and then they threw them into
the fire. They had burns. I brought some of the burned, dead bodies here to
bury them. We buried the dead bodies after getting permission from the army.
When we were burying the bodies, the security forces were standing nearby. They
were together, the army and the police.[158]

A Rohingya man who buried his mother said:

My mother was stabbed with a knife in her head and neck.
She died from bleeding. She died in the evening. I was with her at the time. We
could not do anything for her. Later, we received permission from the
authorities to bury her, so we buried her. I dug her grave with some other
relatives.[159]

Mass Grave on Thackabyin Road

Eyewitnesses told Human Rights Watch that immediately
following the wave of June violence, on June 14, Burmese army soldiers dug a
mass grave on the road to Thackabyin outside the Ba Du Baw IDP camp, just west
of Sittwe.

Displaced Rohingya and local villagers confirmed the details
of what happened: three military trucks arrived at the Muslim cemetery and then
pulled away when people gathered; soldiers dug holes in what was formerly a
Buddhist cremation compound several hundred yards away; and several dozen bodies
were unceremoniously buried. They assumed the bodies were Muslim because the
bodies were buried – had they been Buddhist they would have most likely been
cremated – and because the trucks appeared to have left the Muslim
cemetery to avoid a crowd of Rohingya that had gathered.

In a response to a question from Human Rights Watch about
how dead bodies were dealt with by the authorities, the Ministry of Border
Affairs claimed on February 26 that dead Rakhine bodies were cremated in
Akyeiktawkone cemetery in order to avoid “Bengali villages and refugee
camps” that existed on the same road as another cemetery.[160]
The government claimed, “The dead bodies of Bengalis [Rohingya] were
buried in their religious cemeteries with the arrangement of [the] Rakhine
State Government.”[161]

A Rohingya woman said:

There were three military trucks. I saw them digging a pit
and one truck was parked near the pit. When we passed by the funeral ground,
there were two men holding shovels over a pit. There were bad smells and no one
was allowed to pass through there. I saw one person who tried to go into the
area and he was stopped by the military. The men next to the pit had on
undershirts and military uniform trousers. I saw them take a lot of dead bodies
out of one truck. I saw them drop them next to the pit. I also saw a coffin
being laid on the ground. There was one coffin and the rest were piled up
bodies. If I guessed I would say there were around 50 or 60 bodies. Some bodies
had clothes on, some didn’t.[162]

Another Rohingya woman who had been walking on the road to
Thackabyin, told us:

At around 10 a.m. we saw the truck filled with dead bodies.
There were two people wearing t-shirts with army pants. They were digging in
the ground and there were two other trucks parked there. The men who were
digging were Burman or Arakanese. I think they were all army people. There was
an awful smell coming from the area. When we returned from shopping they
hadn’t finished digging the ditch. I could see in the back of the truck
and the smell was very bad. One dead body was in a wooden coffin. ... The
[displaced Muslim] men walking back and forth on the road also saw it but they
didn’t want to tell anybody. People are very afraid to talk.[163]

A Rohingya woman said that government trucks, including the
truck filled with dead bodies, arrived in the morning of June 14:

At first they went to the Muslim cemetery, slowed down to a
stop, and then the trucks turned around and drove back toward the Buddhist
funeral ground [several hundred yards away]. The soldiers buried the bodies
themselves. I watched them do it. We think they saw us taking photos the day
before, and that they knew we took photos, so they went elsewhere [to the
Buddhist funeral ground]. And [Rohingya] people were gathering as they drove
near the Rohingya cemetery.[164]

Some bodies also appear to have been cremated. A 26-year-old
Rohingya man who had witnessed killings of Rohingya by the police in nearby
Narzi on June 12 said:

They [army] let us take some dead bodies, but the rest of
them we couldn’t take. Most of the Muslim bodies were taken away by the
authorities and cremated in the Buddhist cremation center. The place I am
living is less than a mile away from the cemetery. We could see the burning [at
the cremation center].[165]

In a response to questions from Human Rights Watch, the
government claimed that bodies of Arakanese were cremated in “Akyeiktawkone
cemetery”; they did not mention the cremation of Rohingya bodies.

Mass Graves Outside Ba Du Baw IDP
Camp

Witnesses said that on June 13, a government truck arrived
at an area outside Ba Du Baw IDP camp and dumped 18 naked and half-clothed
bodies in a pile.

Human Rights Watch obtained photos from local sources showing
a cluster of bodies, including at least one of a child. Although Human Rights
Watch was unable to confirm the identities of the victims, local witnesses and
those who buried the bodies asserted they were Rohingya.

Some bodies had their hands still bound, and appeared to
have been killed execution style.[166]
Many showed signs of blunt force trauma, stab wounds, and gunshot wounds. Human
Rights Watch visited the location where the photos were taken and learned at
least three Rohingya men had been ordered to bury the bodies in two nearby
graves.

A 48-year-old Rohingya man explained the condition of the
bodies, matching what is depicted in the photos obtained by Human Rights Watch:

They dropped the bodies right here. Three bodies had
gunshot wounds. Some had burns, some had stab wounds. One gunshot wound was on
the forehead, one on the chest. Two men’s hands were tied at the wrists
in front and another one had his arms tied in the back. We buried the bodies.
... I saw one police car and two municipal trucks [bring the bodies]. After
dropping off the bodies the police ordered us to bury them.[167]

A Rohingya woman who also witnessed the burial said:
“On the 13th [of June] some municipal people brought dead
bodies here so some people could bury them. They just threw down the bodies.
They left 18 bodies that day. That was early in the morning, around 9 a.m.”[168]

One Rohingya man explained that the authorities dumped
bodies on two consecutive days: “The first day it was a municipal truck
and the second day it was a municipal truck. I saw it both days but we were
afraid to take a photograph.”[169]

The bodies that were dumped were buried in two pits
demarcated with two makeshift bamboo fences constructed by local Rohingya.
Human Rights Watch photographed the gravesites, marked the GPS coordinates,[170]
and interviewed other witnesses and gravediggers who all provided similar
details.[171]

Human Rights Watch was unable to learn the provenance of the
bodies. A Rohingya man, 36, said that he had helped place 17 bodies of Rohingya
in an army truck in Narzi, several kilometers away, on June 12.[172]Other witnesses to the violence in Narzi also reported seeing detained
Rohingya tied in ways similar to that described by those who saw the corpses:

At one time, when they [Arakanese] came I saw them catch
one [Rohingya] man and they tied his hands behind his back and made him sit in
the street. There were police nearby. They were working together [with the
Arakanese]. They tied his hands behind his back with a gray-color plastic
string. They had very long swords.[173]

Another Rohingya woman who fled her home in Sittwe on June
10 said: “They [police and Arakanese attackers] brought everybody they
caught to the road. They tied everybody behind their backs.”[174]

Bodies Taken by State Security
Forces

Several Muslims told Human Rights Watch that they saw security
forces collecting dead bodies after the violence in June and October. Apart
from concerns about accountability for the crimes that were committed, the
Muslim communities considered it offensive that they were unable to provide
proper religious burials for their dead.

A Rohingya woman, describing events that took place in Narzi
quarter, Sittwe, in June, told Human Rights Watch: “Nobody could carry
the dead bodies. Some of us tried to get the bodies but we couldn’t. I
saw the security forces take the bodies of the two young boys and young men who
I saw get shot.”[175]

A Kaman Muslim man who witnessed the police kill two boys aged
16 and 17 and a 21-year-old man just a few feet away from him in Kyauk Pyu
said:

They [the three] were all dead. We took their bodies into
the compound of the mosque. They were not buried. By the time we left our
village there were [many] dead in Kyauk Pyu. It was both police and Tatmadaw
[army] who took them. I saw them taking the bodies away. Many people are still
missing today. I don’t know where the bodies are now.[176]

A Rohingya man, 56, from Minbya witnessed four killings by
Arakanese in his village on October 22. He said, “We have no information
about our relatives’ dead bodies. We have our own graveyard but they are
not buried there. I do not know who took the dead bodies.”[177]

IV. Post-October Abuses

Rohingya Flight from Arakan State

We cannot be afraid of the danger [of fleeing by sea]. We
can get over the danger if it means we can get to another country. The danger
cannot be worse than what we are living with here.[178]

—Displaced
Rohingya man from Pauktaw, Arakan State, November 2012

For decades, the Burmese government has made conditions so
difficult for the Rohingya through severe restrictions in violation of their
basic rights and abuses that many have taken great risks in attempts to flee
the country.

In June and October 2012, there was again a massive Rohingya
flight from Burma, which in some cases resulted in deaths at sea. In 2012, an
estimated 13,000 people, including Rohingya and some Bangladeshi nationals,
took to the high seas via the Bay of Bengal on smuggler’s boats.[179]
In the last three months of 2012 alone, which marks the first half of the so-called
“sailing season” (usually October through March) for the Rohingya
when the seas calm, an estimated 5,000 Rohingya fled by boat from the
Bangladesh-Burma border area on 49 boats, dwarfing the exodus of previous
years.[180]
In February 2013, Thai officials announced that at least 6,000 Rohingya,
including men, women, and children, had arrived on Thai shores.[181]

UNHCR has referred to the large number of departures during
this sailing season following the violence and abuses in Arakan State as
“unprecedented.”[182]
Regular departures took place directly from Sittwe and other parts of Arakan State,
in addition to the usual departures from Bangladesh, and for the first time in
recent years, women and small children were among those fleeing.[183]

A Rohingya fisherman from Pauktaw, who had survived for
weeks in an unofficial, makeshift IDP camp outside Sittwe that had received no
humanitarian aid, said:

It will be better if we can go to another country. We want
to leave this place. Life in our village is like life here [in the IDP camp]
– the Arakanese move around freely but we can’t go anywhere. How
can we stay here? It will be better to leave for another country. We all want
to go. We want to do hard work and we want to learn. We want health care and
education and rights. We cannot have that here.[184]

Rohingya in Arakan State told Human Rights Watch they flee because
of violence and abuses from Arakanese and state security forces, and because
government officials and Arakanese communities have restricted and obstructed
the delivery of humanitarian aid to affected Muslim populations since the
violence broke out in June.[185]

Affected Arakanese populations have not suffered
restrictions on humanitarian aid.[186]
In Myebon, for example, a relatively small number of displaced Arakanese were
provided adequate shelter in tents – and elsewhere in local schools and
monasteries – sanitation, food, and medical supplies. At the same time, 4,000
displaced Rohingya just kilometers away were living in squalor, without
adequate shelter, sanitation, or other basic necessities weeks after their
displacement. They were also guarded by soldiers and prevented from leaving.[187]

In Mrauk-U Township, Human Rights Watch interviewed both displaced
Arakanese Buddhists, who had adequate shelter, food, water, sanitation, and
freedom of movement, and nearby displaced Rohingya, who had very little food,
inadequate shelter, and inadequate medical care, among other urgent unmet
needs.[188]
Local Arakanese communities provided an outpouring of support for the Arakanese,
which significantly supplemented assistance provided by private national
fundraising drives and international humanitarian agencies.

As detailed in chapter VI, central government authorities continue to deny humanitarian groups unfettered access to some affected areas, and local Arakanese continue to obstruct the delivery of aid to Rohingya through violent threats aimed at aid workers. Such threats have contributed to pressure on Rohingya to flee the country. Government authorities in Arakan State claim they have investigated some of the incidents in which threats were made – but this has evidently not prevented or discouraged continued threats against humanitarian organizations.[189] In some areas the authorities and the
Arakanese community appear to be in unified opposition to any delivery of aid to Muslim communities. While the army has the capacity to intervene to secure aid deliveries, it has not done
so.[190]

OCHA acknowledged the resumption of all regular humanitarian
aid projects of partners across Arakan State “is yet to be
achieved.”[191]
On December 5, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency
Relief Coordination, Valerie Amos, visited Arakan State and described the
humanitarian situation as “dire.” She said: “I saw thousands
of people in overcrowded, sub-standard shelter with poor sanitation. ... They
don’t have jobs, children are not in school and they can’t leave
the camp because their movement is restricted.”[192]

Each Muslim IDP camp is different, reflecting problems of
coordination and access. Human Rights Watch found a variety of deplorable
humanitarian conditions in each of the official and unofficial IDP camps
visited. In some camps there is inadequate shelter or none at all, a lack of
water and sanitation, medical care, and other necessities. Moreover, the UN
found that 98 percent of the displaced Muslim population was prevented from
accessing markets.[193]
These conditions, combined with trauma from the recent violence and abuse, make
the option of fleeing the country worth the risk for many Rohingya.

Thousands of asylum seekers have attempted to flee from
Burma to Bangladesh since violence erupted in June 8, crossing the Naf River or
finding alternative routes. But the Bangladeshi government closed its borders,
forcing asylum seekers back to sea on barely seaworthy boats in violation of
its obligations under customary international law.[194]
Rohingya have died after being pushed back to sea by Bangladesh Border Guards.[195]

In January 2013, UNHCR reported that 485 Rohingya from
Arakan State and Bangladeshi nationals drowned in four boat accidents in the
Bay of Bengal—but likely many more have drowned.[196] The
media reported that Thai navy officials allegedly removed the engine of a boat
filled with over 100 Rohingya men, women, and children, and then pushed the
boat back to sea – 97 on board starved to death after 25 days stranded at
sea.[197]

Regardless of obvious risks of a sea voyage on rickety,
overcrowded boats, many Rohingya still sought to travel to Malaysia or Thailand
by sea. In November, Human Rights Watch spoke to a group of approximately 70
displaced Rohingya who were part of a larger group from Pauktaw living in an
isolated and treeless coastal area outside Sittwe – referred to as Ohn
Taw Gyi, or the “coconut garden” – struggling in the hot
daytime sun without adequate food, potable water, latrines, and other
necessities. Nearly every person indicated they intended to flee Arakan State
by boat to Malaysia or Thailand. Many remarked that their only obstacle to
fleeing Arakan State was financial.[198]

Illicit boat departures have become a lucrative underground
business in Arakan State, involving local brokers and sizable payments to
Nasaka and the Burmese navy. According to reports from Rohingya, some departing
boats have paid the Nasaka 100,000 kyat (US$120) and the navy 50,000 kyat (US$60).[199]
Individual Rohingya have been forced to pay over $2,000 to smugglers, who have
threatened to kill Rohingya asylum seekers they have transported unless payment
is received from family members.[200]

In past years, boats carrying Rohingya typically left from
northern Arakan State and Bangladesh, and included only men and teenaged boys.
However, boats are now departing from Sittwe Township as well as northern
Arakan State and Bangladesh, and for perhaps the first time, are carrying women
and young children as well.[201]

For two decades, UN bodies have documented the Rohingya
flight from Arakan State as a result of systematic rights abuses. In September
2010, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Burma reported that the discrimination against the Rohingya by the state
“leads to forced deportation.”[202]In
March 2012, the special rapporteur highlighted the cause-and-effect between
discrimination and boat departures: “The impact of these policies of
discrimination ... has resulted in the exodus of many from the community [who]
attempted the dangerous journeys by boat, risking their lives at sea. Some were
pushed back to the sea. Others remain in detention facilities in the countries
where they landed.”[203]

Tightened Restrictions on
Rohingya

We cannot get a degree, and not a single student can travel
to Rangoon for studies. We cannot travel anywhere.[204]

—Rohingya
man from Sittwe, Arakan State, November 2012

Since the violence in June, the Burmese government has
tightened its discriminatory restrictions on the Rohingya, although many of the
policies have been in place for decades. These include restrictions on freedom
of movement, marriage, education, employment and economic livelihood, land and
property ownership, freedom of religion, and other basic facets of everyday life.
Many of these restrictions stem from the Rohingya’s lack of Burmese citizenship,
and are discriminatory measures based on the racial and religious identity of
the group.

In the past, state officials have tightened
such restrictions following periods of sectarian violence and abuses,[205]
and residents and aid workers told us that the aftermath of the October
violence was no exception. A Rohingya former staff member of an international
NGO said: “We cannot travel anywhere. Now, after this [violence], the
army and the government will definitely not allow it. Normally we can only
travel with a letter from the state immigration department and now no one gets
that.”[206]

For the most part the government acknowledges rather than
disputes the restrictions it imposes on the Rohingya, which have long been
reported by the UN and human rights organizations.[207]

On July 31, Burma’s home affairs minister, Lt. Gen. Ko
Ko, told parliament that as a result of the influx of “illegal
immigration” of Rohingya and their “long-term settlement” in
the region, the government would strengthen many of the existing restrictions. He
said:

Border Regions Immigration Inspection Command Headquarters is
tightening the regulations in order to handle travelling, birth, death,
immigration, migration, marriage, construction of new religious buildings,
repairing and land ownership and right to construct building of Bengalis [Rohingya]
under the law.[208]

Nasaka, which enforces many of the restrictions in northern
Arakan State, is notorious for corrupt practices, including demanding
exorbitant bribes from Rohingya in exchange for permission to carry out basic
aspects of life. Rohingya found to have violated restrictions are typically
detained, beaten and mistreated, and extorted prior to being released. In 2012,
Nasaka arbitrarily detained between 2,000 and 2,500 Rohingya for such “offenses”
as repairing homes without permission and having “unregistered
animals” – animals that are not registered with Nasaka. Those in
custody typically secure their release through payments to Nasaka commanders,
usually through brokers or middlemen.[209]

A Rohingya man, 32, said:

Nasaka is the real only authority in Arakan State, made of
local groups – military, police, immigration, and customs. The four law
enforcement groups come together. This is only in Arakan State, and it is the
worst one, the most terrible one. Nasaka says that even when you breathe you
need permission from us. If they want they can take our cattle anytime they
want. They arrest people, they take money – they do whatever they want.[210]

A Rohingya elder told Human Rights Watch:

It is their [Nasaka’s] official objective to check
the border, to control the infiltration of foreigners, to harass the native Muslim
population. Everything is “taxes.” If you want to move from one
place to another, you have to pay. If you have a baby cow, you have to report
it and pay. If you repair your house without permission, you’ll be sent
to jail, and then you’ll be forced to pay. We cannot marry without
permission. We have to pay.[211]

A UN official in northern Arakan State told Human Rights
Watch:

The local [Rohingya] homes [in Maungdaw] are made of
leaves, very basic houses, and they have to repair them for the rainy season. If
you want to repair your house, you have to pay money to agents. Nasaka will
never take it directly. They have an agent system. A civilian is typically
responsible for collecting money and mediating the issues. If a Rohingya wants
to go from one village to by another, they need permission, and Nasaka signs the permission. It is a
difficult procedure that involves payments and money. In some cases the village
administration directly would collect the money, in other cases it would be the
brokers. ... The fear of Nasaka among the Muslim population is very high. There
are also other restrictions on property. If a Rohingya has one more goat or cow
than the records show, they would be in trouble. The more livestock they have,
the more they would have to pay.[212]

This extortion is particularly damaging
given that the Rohingya, even before the recent violence, were possibly the
poorest population in Burma’s second poorest state.[213]

Relatively wealthy
Rohingya – a small minority – have been targeted specifically since
October and have in the past been fined up to 10 million kyat [$12,000], and in
some cases as high as 20 million kyat [$24,000].[214]

The discriminatory
restrictions on marriage have tightened since October, making it more difficult
for Rohingya to obtain official permission to marry.[215] Men and women are often arrested and
sentenced to prison for unlawful marriages.[216]
“Lawful” marriages require sizable payments to Nasaka. A staff
member of an international NGO operating in northern Arakan State said:

Marriages are very difficult [to obtain]. Couples need to
pay a lot. If they get married unofficially then their kids are not considered
legal. Some women who wear burkas have been forced to take them off. They have
no access to land. If they want to do any rehabilitation on their houses, they
have to pay. And it costs them 500,000 kyat [$600 USD] to construct a house.
They are actually taken to jail and forced to negotiate if they violate any of
the rules.[217]

Human Rights Watch received numerous reports of “night
checks” – unannounced raids by Nasaka into Muslim homes to check home
occupancy. Security personnel typically enter Muslim homes unannounced and
count family members against their records. If the figures conflict, the
officials detain some or all of the residents, and in many cases, extort, and
beat or otherwise mistreat them before letting them go. Human Rights Watch
received information about such raids by authorities in Maungdaw Township
following the waves of violence in June and October, and in early December in
Myoma Kayidan and Shweza villages, resulting in several arrests.[218]
At least one report of a nighttime check that allegedly resulted in mass rape
of Rohingya women has also come to light since October.[219] Human
Rights Watch also received information on many other alleged abuses that have not
been independently verified.

The UN official in northern Arakan State said that fines can
be between 200,000 and 1 million kyat, depending on the accusation.[220]

Some Arakanese nationalists expressed their opposition to
the increased restrictions on movement of the Rohingya since October –
but ironically not because freedom of movement is a human right, but because it
prevents Rohingya from leaving Arakan State. An Arakanese activist told Human
Rights Watch: “They [officials] block the Bengali people from going to
Rangoon. This is terrible for us. Even the Burmese [Burman] people are really
worried about the Bengali people coming to Rangoon.”[221]

The Burmese government has also
systematically violated the Rohingya right to education – this, too, has
intensified when since the violence began. Displaced Rohingya and those confined to their villages
in and outside Sittwe said that since June, education for their children has
been unavailable. After the October violence, the government prevented
Rohingya and other Muslims from accessing education in Sittwe Township.[222] According to a Rohingya man living near Sittwe:

We haven’t had access to any education since the
violence. At the same time, the Arakanese living downtown …their children
can attend school. The levels of access for our children are very different
now. They [the Arakanese] can attend primary class but for us, it’s not
available here.[223]

A university-age Rohingya student from Sittwe said:
“In Maungdaw and Buthidaung the [Muslim] students can’t attend
university, and even the students living near the university here [in Sittwe]
can’t attend the university. The government said they could not provide
security for us.”[224]

A local Rohingya leader from Aung Mingalar, the last
remaining Muslim neighborhood in Sittwe, told Human Rights Watch:

There is one school in Aung Mingalar, but no one has
attended it since June. The teachers were mostly Arakanese and they don’t
dare come here anymore. And there are no schools in the [IDP] camps. We want to
build schools and madrassas. Donations could come from the OIC [Organization
for Islamic Cooperation] but the government won’t let the OIC come here,
and we don’t think the government will build schools here.[225]

V. The Response from Naypyidaw

While the central government’s rhetoric on the
situation in Arakan State has evolved and become more nuanced since the October
violence, its overall response to the situation remains woefully inadequate.

The central government has made repeated conciliatory
gestures to foreign diplomats and representatives of intergovernmental and
nongovernmental organizations, chaperoning several visits to Arakan State for envoys
from the US, UK, Australia, Turkey and other countries, as well as UN and international
NGO officials. The government also permitted visits by the media. Rohingya displaced
persons have also been gradually receiving more aid, though still far short of
adequate – in part because of government approvals and action in response
to demands from humanitarian agencies for greater access and support.

However, members of the Arakanese community and state
security forces continue to commit violence against Rohingya throughout the
state. The government’s humanitarian response in many areas remains
dismal, giving rise to what OCHA has referred to as a “potentially
devastating” effect on displaced Rohingya.[226]

Early on in the crisis, on July 12, 2012, President Thein
Sein said that the “only solution” to the situation in Arakan State
was to send “illegal” Rohingya to “third countries” or
to refugee camps overseen by UNHCR. He said:

We will take care of our own ethnic nationalities, but
Rohingyas who came to Burma illegally are not of our ethnic nationalities and
we cannot accept them here. … The solution to this problem is that they
can be settled in refugee camps managed by UNHCR, and UNHCR provides [sic] for
them. If there are countries that would accept them, they could be sent
there.[227]

The statement was quickly rejected by UNHCR, which responded,
“Resettlement under the UHNCR program is only for recognized refugees.
And people cannot be refugees in their own country. So it is not logical to
talk about resettlement for people who are in their own country.”[228]

Instead of provoking outrage
in Burma, the remarks generated considerable popular support for Thein Sein.[229] The response reflected the widespread anti-Rohingya
views of many Burmese that extends far beyond the Arakanese community, who
themselves have often been at odds with the Burman-dominated government. Many Burmese
continue to invoke the president’s call for expatriation of Rohingya as a
political solution to the Rohingya “problem.”

In September 2011, the government established the Myanmar
National Human Rights Commission (MNHRC).[230] President Thein Sein
appointed the 15 members of the commission, including chairman Win Mra and
Vice-Chairman Kyaw Tint Swe.[231]
From June 27 to July 1, Win Mra, an ethnic Arakanese, led a three-member
commission team to Arakan State to assess the situation. On July 11, the
commission provided its findings to the government, reportedly finding that no
government abuses had occurred and that all humanitarian needs in Arakan State
were being met.[232]

Following this, the president’s
office publicly denied the severity of
the violence and allegations of abuse in Arakan State. An August 21 press
release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that the situation was
neither a conflict between two religious groups nor a humanitarian issue, but
rather “was only the violence [sic] conflict between two communities
within a state of Myanmar following a criminal act.” The ministry blamed
foreign media and organizations for issuing statements “based on false
and fabricated news,” and denied that sectarian issues had any bearing on
the situation, stating:

The incidents ... are sectarian conflicts which are purely
internal affairs of a sovereign state. They are not relating to any kind of
religious persecution or religious discrimination. Therefore, we will not
accept any attempt to politically regionalize or internationalize this conflict
as a religious issue. Such attempt will not contribute to finding solutions to
the problem, but will only complicate the issue further.[233]

Following the second major outbreak of violence and abuse in
late October, the president’s office asserted that “riots erupted ...
unexpectedly.” Thein Sein’s press release on October 25 claimed implausibly
low casualties – 12 deaths and 50 wounded from the October violence. The press
release stated that “persons and organizations” were responsible
for “conducting manipulation in the incidents ... behind the
scene,” and they “will be exposed and legal actions will be taken
against them.”[234]
The government has made no further statements about the “persons and
organizations” responsible.

In a November 16 letter to the UN secretary-general, Thein
Sein further softened his public rhetoric noting that “once emotions
subside on all sides” his government was prepared to “address
contentious political dimensions, ranging from resettlement of displaced
populations to granting of citizenship ... [to] issues of birth registration,
work permits and permits for movement across the country for all, in line with
a uniform national practice across the country ensuring that they are in
keeping with accepted international norms.”[235] This
was reiterated in a statement released on November 18, prior to US President
Barack Obama’s visit to Burma, asserting the government would
“address contentious political dimensions, ranging from resettlement of
displaced populations to granting of citizenship.”[236]

Following these statements, and Obama’s historic
visit, the first to Burma by a sitting US president, the Burmese government not
only failed to meet the commitments concerning Arakan State made to Obama, but
its rhetoric made a sharp reversal. A December 6 press release from the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs implicitly denies the existence of the Rohingya by referring
to them as “so-called ‘Rohingyas’” and “Bengalis,”
and denies any government wrongdoing against the Rohingya:

The Ministry reaffirmed that the government security forces
and local authorities have never [been] involved in the communal violence or
racial and religious discrimination in Rakhine [Arakan] State as accused by some
media and organizations. The Head of State and other responsible officials have
also declared this to the world at the UN General Assembly, ASEAN Summit and
the Non-Aligned Summit.[237]

Moreover, in a parliamentary session on February 21, 2013,
Burma’s deputy immigration and population minister, Kyaw Kyaw Win, denied
the existence of the Rohingya.[238] Such
denials imply the Rohingya are not entitled to protections and rights available
to other Burmese minority communities and they leave them vulnerable to further
abuse.

Even taking Thein Sein at his word regarding the commitments
he made prior to Obama’s visit, the timeline and manner in which the
government intends to pursue solutions to the crisis remain unclear. In the
meantime, the abuses and discrimination faced by the Rohingya, including
unequal citizenship status, appear no closer to being resolved.

VI. Humanitarian Concerns

In December 2012, the UN’s humanitarian affairs
office, OCHA, referred to the situation in Arakan State as “dire,”
and in February 2013 said there would be a “potentially
devastating” effect on displaced Rohingya if the government did not take
urgent action.[239]
At least 125,000 people, the vast majority Rohingya Muslims, are living in official
and unofficial IDP camps in the state and are in urgent need of humanitarian
assistance.[240]
This included at least 74,800 displaced from in June 2012 and more than 36,400
displaced in October 2012 from the violence and abuses.[241]
These figures do not account for the unknown number of those who have fled
Burma’s borders since mid-2012.[242] Tens of thousands have
not been receiving humanitarian aid.[243]

Since October, Human Rights Watch visited every major IDP
camp in Sittwe Township as well as pockets of displaced persons in coastal and
intra-coastal waterway areas, and in Mrauk-U Township. The displaced in Arakan
State are located in 13 townships throughout the state. The 15 largest IDP
camps are in the area of the state capital, Sittwe.

Even in the larger camps populated by those who were
displaced in June, the humanitarian needs are great. In November, OCHA reported
that 2,900 children in the IDP camps were suffering from acute malnutrition and
“facing high risk of mortality” from months of untreated
malnutrition. The UN also reported that “shelter needs have significantly
increased”; 20,000 displaced persons were without sufficient safe water,
and 24,000 were without latrines; and 65 percent had no access to health
facilities in their locations of displacement.[244]
Several Rohingya and displaced Kaman told Human Rights Watch the greatest needs
in the most established camps were medical care and education for the children.[245]

Nearly every IDP site differs – some Muslim displaced
persons are living in overcrowded tent camps, others in
“semi-permanent” structures constructed by the government, while
others had no shelter or basic aid. They said that as of November, weeks after
their arrival, Burmese authorities guarded them like prisoners. Some of the
displaced stayed in a treeless coastal area, known colloquially as the
“coconut garden,” and were using tarps for shelter bearing the logo
of a UN agency that they said they purchased from local merchants. The UN has
noted that shelter “continues to be one of the main priorities for the
displaced populations,” and that “a number of people in Sittwe ... have
been without adequate shelter since June.”[246]
UNHCR reported on January 30 that it was still in the planning stage of
delivering tent shelters to areas where Rohingya had already been displaced for
more than three months.[247]

These great needs reflect the lack of humanitarian access since
the beginning of the crisis. The government failed to facilitate access for
humanitarian organizations and created administrative obstacles, such as
failing to issue travel authorizations and visas in a timely manner. Arakanese
communities that were hostile to foreign aid workers who delivered aid to
Muslim areas also sought to obstruct access. [248] In
some areas, such as Myebon, in which aid deliveries to Muslim communities were
being blocked, the security forces failed to intervene.[249] After
initial security concerns subsided, the government did not fully reinstate
humanitarian programs of international organizations, primarily for the Rohingya
population, that existed before the violence began.

The long-term intentions of the Burmese government regarding
the Rohingya and other displaced Muslims are of particular concern. The
government has yet to rebuild Muslim-owned houses destroyed in the violence or
take measures to permit Rohingya or Kaman Muslim displaced persons return to
their home areas.[250]

In contrast, the government has worked closely with local
Arakanese communities to assist the few remaining IDP sites populated by
displaced Arakanese, demonstrating the government has the ability to assist displaced
populations should it have the political will to do so. Thousands of displaced
Arakanese have returned home with assistance from the government and, according
to Arakanese who spoke to Human Rights Watch and our own site visits to
Arakanese IDP camps, those who remain displaced generally have adequate
shelter, and are provided with food, water, sanitation, and other services.[251]
UNHCR reported that the government, with assistance from UNHCR and Save the
Children, will have rebuilt permanent housing for all displaced Arakanese by
the end of February – a total of 669 houses.[252]

Unlike with the Rohingya, displaced Arakanese are not
confined to the camps. Thus when Human Rights Watch visited the comparably
small Arakanese IDP camps in June and October, only women and children, and the
occasional monk, were present. The men were off working, including reconstructing
their communities. A displaced 32-year-old Arakanese mother of two from Purin
village in Mrauk-U Township told Human Rights Watch: “Some of our
husbands are still staying at our houses and some are working in the town. Some
are still in the village.”[253]

UN agencies have repeatedly and publicly stressed the urgency
of the situation, reported in detail on humanitarian and protection problems,
and projected humanitarian needs through June 2013.[254]
Several displaced Rohingya communities in Sittwe Township were informally
working with nearby Rohingya villages to fill gaps and provide aid to the
neediest Muslim IDP populations. Rohingya have been participating in camp
committees tasked with, among other things, camp registration, which is
required to receive aid from the World Food Program and other international
agencies.[255]

The Burmese government has obligations under international
law to ensure that all displaced persons have adequate access to food and other
humanitarian relief.[256] The
government has failed to meet its obligations by not addressing the security
concerns of the Rohingya population, by imposing discriminatory restrictions on
Rohingya freedom of movement, and by unnecessarily restricting humanitarian
agencies that are seeking to provide for populations at risk.

Access to Aid and Restrictions on
Movement

We can’t go to the market and don’t have enough
food. I don’t know what happened to our paddy fields that are ready for
harvest now.

—Displaced
Rohingya man, 56, Minbya Township, November 2012

Tens of thousands of Muslims in Arakan State have not had
sustained access to humanitarian assistance since the outbreak of violence in
June 2012. This has not only affected displaced persons, but the many Muslim
communities that have been unable to move freely to resume their livelihoods go
to markets due to hostile Arakanese communities and restrictions on movement
enforced by Burmese security forces.

According to OCHA, roughly 98 percent of “assessed
IDPs” do not have access to markets.[257] Medecins San
Frontieres reported that “tens of thousands of people are still unable to
access urgently needed medical care.”[258]

On December 5, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian
Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordination, Valerie Amos visited Arakan State and
found that up to 4,000 Rohingya displaced persons in Myebon “can’t
leave the camp because their movement is restricted.”[259]

Moreover, a humanitarian response plan published by OCHA on
November 16 and agreed upon by humanitarian partners in Arakan State, noted:
“The lack of access to basic services by the IDPs and some communities,
whose freedom of movement is now even more limited than before the violence
erupted in June, is also of serious concern.”[260]
Seven months later, in February 2013, UN Resident Coordinator in Burma Ashok
Nigam, “stressed the need to address the issue of freedom of movement of
the affected people, displaced or otherwise, as this is crucial to ensure
resumption of livelihood activities and guarantee access to basic services to
all people living in” Arakan State.[261]

We cannot go anywhere. ... Before the Arakanese attacked us
we had 2,460 people here. We are still here. The government told us they would
supply food, oil and other things ... but it hasn’t arrived. We cannot go
out to the market or town, so we can’t buy anything.[262]

A 24-year-old man in Yan Thei village said:

We cannot move. … We are still here outside the
village, in the open air. We have a makeshift tent made with leaves. The
government supplied us with rice twice. Each family got four cups of rice. But
we cannot go catch fish or buy anything from the market. Those who fled from
the violence, they cannot come back. On the road, the Arakanese could attack
us. We need more help from outside.[263]

Displaced persons who fled to Sittwe have faced similar
problems. In November, a displaced Rohingya woman near Ba Du Baw camp told
Human Rights Watch, “We have not received rations in three days. WFP
usually delivers regularly but the rations have not come. It has been five
months now and there are still many people who have no shelter, no rations.”[264]

A displaced man in a coastal area in Sittwe Township that
had yet to receive any aid when we visited told us:

Now we live with the cow manure. We stay where the buffalos
live. We need rice and shelter and medicine and many other things. ... The
government has not supplied anything here. Only the local people are helping us.
… We have no latrines. We need a water supply because the well water is
no good. During the day we are in the sun and during the night we have no
covers. We have no blankets, no clothes, no food, no medicine. Those further
out on the shore have it worse. They have no water at all.[265]

In some cases the government provided small amounts of aid
to newly arriving displaced persons reaching coastal areas outside Sittwe town.
A displaced Rohingya in the area told Human Rights Watch:

We have been sleeping on the sand. When I arrived on the
shore, the security forces supplied us with 17 bags of rice and 20 packets of
noodles, and three water bottles. I think that came from the state government.
Later these people here [members of the nearby Rohingya community] supplied us
food. The first time [they came] we took money from those who came to donate
food and we took rice and curry the [local community] donors gave us.[266]

Serious health concerns of the Muslim IDP population have
not been addressed throughout the state, which UN agencies and international NGOs
such as MSF have highlighted.[267]
A displaced Rohingya man from Pauktaw said:

There are many sick here. Diarrhea and fevers are the most
common illnesses. We have to live outside. The sun is very hot. There are also
pregnant women here but no midwife. More than 10 women are pregnant here.[268]

When Human Rights Watch visited the government hospital in
Sittwe in October 2012, there were no Muslim patients in the hospital. A
hospital employee told Human Rights Watch: “There have been no Bengali
[Rohingya] patients in the hospital. If some Bengali [Rohingya] patients were
sent to the hospital there would be many problems. I think there is a separate
hospital by the military, in the refugee [IDP] camp. This is a government
hospital.”[269]

A displaced Rohingya man in Sittwe said: “After our
houses were burned down here we couldn’t go to the government hospital.
We cannot go to government hospitals.”[270]

While a number of seriously injured Arakanese patients have
been sent to Rangoon for treatment since June, this is not an option for the Rohingya
because the government does not permit them to travel outside their townships.
Kaman Muslims have citizenship and the right to travel, but they too face
restrictions due to security. A Kaman Muslim man, 65, from Sittwe said:

On September 28, a Kaman woman was attacked [in Sittwe] by
Arakanese on her way back from the market. She was stabbed with a knife on her
neck. She was sent to the hospital and was released. We were trying to send her
to Rangoon for treatment. She cannot go outside here. She is very afraid to go
outside here.[271]

Another humanitarian concern is with regard to displaced
persons in Sittwe Township and other sites who are not registered with the UN
and camp committees, and thus not receiving aid. The Burmese government has
done little to ensure timely registration of IDPs at official government camps
like Ba Du Baw IDP camp. A Rohingya woman near that camp told Human Rights
Watch about thousands who are unregistered in the camps and thus not receiving
aid:

The first step is to get a registration in the camp and if
you don’t get registration you don’t get anything. There are 9,756
people registered here in Ba Du Baw camps, but there are over 14,000 people
here. It is difficult. The registration is directly related to the rations.
People are still coming every day. Some are from Pauktaw and Rathedaung.[272]

International aid workers who conducted unofficial surveys
in the IDP camps estimated that approximately 40,000 people were receiving food
aid as of January 30, 2013, leaving tens of thousands without adequate food and
nutrition.[273]
Win Myaing, a spokesman for the Arakan State government, suggested that Rohingya
were deliberately inflating their own figures to receive more aid: “Now,
when we are making a list in the camp over here, then people from [another
camp] will come. Frankly, [the Rohingya] are just attempting to make the list
bigger so that they can get more aid.”[274]

Some Rohingya IDPs alleged that security forces stole their
belongings when they reached the shore in Sittwe. A 30-year-old Rohingya described
what happened to some villagers from his community: “Some of us were
stopped by the seashore by the authorities. We were blocked there. I saw the
authorities take away possessions they [the IDPs] brought. Instead of giving
them aid and relief, they took things.”[275]

Risks to Humanitarian Relief

Staff continues to be subject to threats and intimidations,
and this resulted in several resignations of key staff discharging vital
services including health provision for both communities.[276]

—United
Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Response Plan,
November 2012

A major obstacle to the delivery of humanitarian aid has
been deep and widespread animosity among the local Arakanese community towards
UN agencies and international humanitarian organizations providing relief to
displaced Muslim populations. Local Arakanese, in some cases led by Buddhist
monks, have publicly protested against and physically obstructed aid to
Rohingya, issued threats against aid workers, and distributed pamphlets calling
on the Arakanese community to attack staff and supporters of specific
organizations.

Human Rights Watch obtained several pamphlets circulated in
Sittwe and vicinity, urging that Arakanese oppose the UN and international NGOs’
delivery of any aid to Rohingya in the state. One pamphlet says that in
providing aid to the Rohingya, the UN and international organizations have
“watered poisonous plants.” Regarding UN agencies, it says,
“We have to attack them.”[277]

The threats against aid workers persisted long after the
violence and have resulted in serious staffing problems, further hindering aid.[278]
MSF reported in February that their “medical teams face continued threats
and hostility” from local Arakanese populations, preventing the delivery
of emergency medical care to displaced Rohingya.[279]

Several local Arakanese activists and political leaders
– from the RNDP and the Arakan League for Democracy (ALD) – acknowledged
and shared the longstanding local resentment for aid agencies, and the reasons
behind it, but dismissed the threats to physical security. They told Human Rights
Watch that the UN and international NGOs would be welcome to provide assistance
to Arakanese communities now and in the future.[280]

Several Arakanese told Human Rights Watch that they believed
Rohingya staff members of humanitarian agencies were linked to al-Qaeda and
other international extremist groups.[281] A prominent Buddhist
monk in Sittwe told Human Rights Watch:

We cannot trust the UN officers because they are al-Qaeda.
The Muslim guy in UNHCR, the Muslim guys from MSF and ACF [Action Contre la
Faim], the doctor [Dr. Tun Aung], and other Islamic men and women are all part
of al-Qaeda. They contacted al-Qaeda members. That is real.[282]

A common view frequently expressed by Arakanese is that aid
agencies have neglected their communities for decades and catered exclusively
to the Rohingya population. This has led some Arakanese to call for blocking
the delivery of aid to both Rohingya and Arakanese displaced persons. One
pamphlet dated July 14, 2012 and delivered to aid agencies states:

[H]ere in Arakan the UN agencies and INGOs
have been completely neglecting us native Arakanese Buddhists who are fully
eligible for international aid, and one-sidedly supported only the so-called
Rohingyas who actually are illegal Bengali Muslims. The direct outcome of their
discriminatory actions was that so many of us native Arakanese Buddhists were
killed and their properties destroyed by the terrorist Bengali Muslims. ...
Thus we Rakhine Buddhists will be totally refusing the ineffective small aids
given by the UN and INGOs.[283]

A man expressed a common view in the Arakanese community in
Sittwe: “There is an NGO in front of my house and they wrote on a sign,
‘No discrimination,’ and so on, claiming they do not discriminate,
but in reality they only provide aid to Rohingya people.”[284]

Many Arakanese consider it a problem that humanitarian
groups have provided lifesaving aid to Rohingya. A senior monk in Sittwe who
was active in obstructing aid convoys to displaced Rohingya told Human Rights
Watch:

I don’t want to stop the cars that will go assist the
Muslim community but in reality only 1 percent of the aid is going to the
Arakanese and 99 percent is going to the Muslim community. The Muslim people
get stronger day-by-day because the humanitarian agencies are providing assistance,
which is why the problem is getting bigger.[285]

When asked to clarify, the monk confirmed his belief that
humanitarian aid to Rohingya Muslims was a problem and should be stopped.[286]

Protests against the Organization for Islamic Cooperation
(OIC)

In late September 2012, a large two-day public meeting of
approximately 2,000 people from all 17 townships in Arakan State was held in
Rathedaung. It resulted in a public statement that called for, among other
things, opposition to “OIC intervention” and the planned
establishment of an OIC office “anywhere in Arakan State.”
Opposition to the OIC reflects a larger, public effort by Arakanese to oppose
humanitarian aid to the Rohingya by international aid agencies and
organizations. This anti-OIC effort started as a concerted local campaign
that then spread nationwide the following month.[287]
In Arakanese villages, Human Rights Watch observed an abundance of
“anti-OIC” materials, including t-shirts, pamphlets, and other
written material, much of it in English.[288]

Following the September meeting, Arakanese supported by
Buddhist monks organized public assemblies and street protests in Sittwe to
oppose the presence of Rohingya in Arakan State and advocate against
humanitarian aid for them. These protests proceeded without government
interference. Protests in Sittwe on October 9 called for the government to
expel Rohingya from the country, to deny the OIC entry into Burma, and to
empty Aung Mingalar, the last remaining Muslim enclave in Sittwe.[289]
A similar protest followed in Mandalay on October 12, involving an estimated
2,000 participants.[290]
Other protests since June have opposed the presence of the UN and
international aid agencies in Arakan State because they provide aid to the
Rohingya.[291]

By November, the Arakanese opposition to the OIC’s
plans to establish an office in Burma and administer aid to the Rohingya
reached a fever pitch. An influential local Arakanese man in Sittwe told
Human Rights Watch:

The OIC is not based on human rights but on the Islamic
religion. In the past I didn’t study anything about the Islamic
religion, but now I know more. Now I am starting to know that the Islamic
religion is a kind of terrorism. ... We believe the OIC is a kind of
terrorism. The purpose or goal of the OIC is to cover the world with Islam
through Islamization.[292]

A prominent monk in Sittwe told Human Rights Watch:

The reason we protest against the OIC opening an office
here is because the OIC is not representing one county – it represents
57 countries. We also think a lot of the OIC countries are militant
countries. They should take care of their own domestic terrorist movements
first. In reality, if the OIC values humanitarian norms and standards, then
they should have come here when the cyclone [Giri] happened [in October
2010]. Why would they like to get involved now? Only when they first deal
with the terrorist groups inside their own countries, then they can come to
assist.[293]

Many Arakanese in Arakan State still speak about when the
Taliban destroyed ancient Buddhist statues in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, which led
to widespread anti-Muslim violence in Burma in 2001.[294]
Most Arakanese, however, were unaware that the OIC traveled to Afghanistan to
try to prevent the Taliban’s action.[295]

Notably, anti-OIC, anti-Rohingya protests in Sittwe
received official permission from the state – which also requires state
approval for any slogans uttered on the picket line – while those in
Mandalay did not. Both protests occurred without incident or intervention
from the authorities.[296]

The protests accomplished their goal. Immediately after
the protests, President Thein Sein cancelled a signed agreement with the OIC
that was to lead to the establishment of an official presence in Burma. An
official from the president’s office was quoted as saying, “The
president will not allow an OIC office because it is not in accordance with
the people’s desires.”[297]

Human Rights Watch also documented small-scale corruption in
the delivery of aid to unregistered IDP camps. This petty corruption raised
concerns that the security forces might also be tampering with the aid itself.

During the week of October 22, when tens of thousands of
Muslims were displaced in nine townships in Arakan State, several thousand fled
to Sittwe in search of a safe haven. They arrived in droves with very few
belongings, landing on desolate, treeless beaches. They soon encountered
hostile police and Nasaka officers who restricted their movement and blocked
assistance until local aid workers paid them bribes.

Rohingya in Sittwe Township told Human Rights Watch they had
made payments to police to deliver food aid to otherwise isolated and displaced
Rohingya. One makeshift coastal camp with an estimated 1,200 displaced Rohingya
from Pauktaw lacked latrines, adequate shelter, and was subsisting primarily on
donations from nearby Rohingya villages. A 38-year-old displaced Rohingya man
who was delivering aid to the site told Human Rights Watch:

I gave 50,000 Kyat [$60] to the troops for snacks and tea.
It was on October 26 in Ohn Daw. We brought rice, cooked beef, and water, and
in order to give them these things we have to approach the police with money. I
handed over the food and money to the police but I couldn’t watch what
they did with it. I can only hope it gets delivered. There are no other groups
giving food there yet. Yesterday we also had to give 40,000 kyat [$47] for
pre-paid phone cards for the police.[298]

A Rohingya man, 30, originally from Pauktaw but living in a
Rohingya village on the outskirts of Sittwe, said:

The local community here wants to donate some things but
they [Lon Thein] don’t allow it. The [displaced] people have been there
more than 10 days and they still have no steady source of food. We had to give
70,000 kyat [$83] to Lon Thein to bring them food on October 30. If we
don’t give the money we can’t deliver the food. And the food
can’t be given directly. We have provided that same payment to them every
day for seven consecutive days.[299]

In some cases, after payments were made to security forces,
local aid workers were permitted to deliver food directly to newly arrived
IDPs. A displaced person from Pautkaw said: “No one from the government
has come here to see us. But the local people came and gave us food and other
supplies. They are all Muslim, mostly Rohingya.”[300]

Secondary and Tertiary Forced
Displacement

The lack of sustained access to humanitarian aid in Arakan
State puts internally displaced persons at greater risk of abuse after their
initial displacement. The adverse humanitarian impacts of displacement,
including psychosocial, economic, and health impacts, are typically compounded
by multiple displacements. Humanitarian agencies in Arakan State have
recognized and responded to situations of multiple displacements. In November, UNHCR
recognized that aid shortfalls might contribute to instability for the
population: “Provision of basic needs and services are urgently required
in all affected locations to deter multiple displacements.”[301]

Following the October attacks, government officials,
including Arakan State ministers and Nasaka officials transferred
Muslim IDPs from the areas to which they had first fled to a second
displacement site. The reasons for the multiple displacements are unclear. In
some cases, the authorities said they intended to transfer displaced Muslims
from Sittwe to areas in northern Arakan State, a largely Muslim area without a
continued presence of international relief organizations. The concern was that
this was intended as a permanent shift of the state’s population.

Several displaced Rohingya said the authorities told them
they would have to go to Rathedaung or Maungdaw, two of the three predominantly
Muslim townships in northern Arakan State.[302]

Beginning on October 23, Nasaka forces and government
officials met displaced Rohingya from Pauktaw at sea and onshore when they
approached Sittwe in small boats. The officials ordered the Rohingya to
continue their journey to Rathedaung, a predominantly Muslim township several
hours north of Sittwe. Finally they were allowed to temporarily come on shore
– some groups had been at sea for several days. A 27-year-old fisherman
from one such group said:

After two days on the beach, the Arakan State minister [Hla
Maung Thein] arrived. He said we couldn’t stay and that we must go to
Rathedaung. We replied that we didn’t want to go to Rathedaung, we wanted
to stay in Sittwe. When the minister left, the Nasaka took five people from our
group and beat them terribly right in front of me. Later, we secretly came
onshore. Two or three days later Lon Thein took the wood from our boats for
firewood. I spent eight days living on the beach. We had no shelter.[303]

Human Rights Watch confirmed that some members of this group
avoided transfer to Rathedaung by secretly traveling to the IDP camps in
Sittwe. Others were transferred to Sin Ta Maw, a site of Rohingya displacement
but not an official IDP camp.

Nine displaced Kaman Muslims from Kyauk Pyu faced similar
difficulties. A flotilla of 21 boats were forced to spend one night at sea near
Navy ships that provided them with water but prevented them from traveling
onward to Sittwe, pending permission from a state minister. After a day and a
half at sea, a number of boats went ahead without permission and made their way
to Sittwe, where they encountered hostile Nasaka border guards. A Kaman Muslim
man said:

I carried people to shore with my [small engine] boat, from
a larger boat. We did this three times to bring people ashore. But then the
sunset was coming and we tried to bring the whole group of boats to shore. Nasaka
fired warning shots in the air, and one bullet passed very close to us. My
brother heard it go right past his head. So we turned our boat around and
headed back to sea.[304]

This flotilla spent another night at sea and then one
representative from each boat went on shore to negotiate with Nasaka:

We met with the Nasaka commander and army commander. The
Nasaka commander said, “You cannot land at this village. You have to go
to the Rathedaung area, to Kyauk Pan Du village,” a two-hour trip away.
We replied that we couldn’t go there because we had old men and women and
children.[305]

Despite the boats’ running very low on supplies,
Nasaka forced them back out to sea. The next day, the western commander of the
army and the Arakan State minister, Hla Maung Htin, arrived and reportedly allowed
the group to come on shore “for two or three days,” but said the
group would eventually have to travel on to Kyauk Pan Du village in Rathedaung
Township.[306]

The following day, Nasaka ordered the group to return to
their original village in Kyauk Pyu, even though it had been destroyed. The
Kaman man said, “We thought that in Kyauk Pyu there would be no houses
left and the flames would still be burning. We did not dare go back.”[307]
The next day, the orders from the authorities changed yet again, and the
authorities said they would instead have to go to Sin Ta Maw – several
hours away by boat – in Pauktaw Township.[308] At
that point, Nasaka brought in reinforcements and forced the group to travel to
Sin Ta Maw. One Rohingya man said: “No one from Kyauk Pyu wants to go to
Sin Ta Maw but Nasaka forced us to go. We heard they were planning to send us
to Maungdaw from Sin Ta Maw. We heard that from a senior officer and state
minister.” This man escaped the forced relocation and made his way to a
nearby Rohingya village outside Sittwe.[309]

At the time of writing, some displaced Kaman remain in Sin
Ta Maw, and due to a lack of access to aid, some have sought again to reach the
camps outside Sittwe.

On November 31, Sittwe Police Battalion 12 attempted to
forcibly move approximately 250 Rohingya displaced persons near the Ba Du Baw
and Thaychaung IDP camps outside Sittwe to a makeshift IDP site in Sin Ta Maw
village in Pauktaw Township, where IDPs and media reports have reported a lack
of basic provisions and aid.[310]
Some of the Rohingya resisted and stayed behind. The next day they were beaten
by police, including a woman who gave birth the day before. The police shot and
injured eight people before departing and leaving the injured behind.[311]

Obstacles to Return

There is a deeply held
concern among displaced Muslims in Arakan State that the Burmese government
intends to make their relocation permanent, segregating Rohingya and other
Muslims from the Buddhist population. This belief is based upon the
participation of the Burmese security forces in the attacks on Muslim
communities, the efforts of security forces to relocate fleeing Muslims to
areas far beyond their long-time residences, the tight restrictions on movement
and humanitarian assistance, and the unwillingness of the authorities to
prosecute members of the security forces and others responsible for serious
abuses against Muslims. All these considerations point to a government program
of ethnic cleansing. In such a context, the hopes for a prompt return to their
homes seem very much in doubt.

Remarks by the government in
their dealings with the diplomatic
community and humanitarian agencies heighten such concerns. According to
diplomats and humanitarian officials, then Border Affairs Minister Thein Htay
and other government officials asserted in meetings that the two communities
would have to remain apart for a minimum of three years in order to let
tensions calm, and suggested that a plan of long-term separation of the
communities was justified for the economic development of Sittwe and Arakan
State. According to OCHA, “In
Sittwe, the Government estimates that a return may be obstructed due to the
continued tension between communities, as well as because of a government-led
town planning exercise which envisages the extension of the urban area towards
the north-west.”[312]

The populations of Sittwe are
at present completely segregated. The neighborhood of Aung Mingalar, the last
remaining Muslim neighborhood in the capital, is surrounded by an Arakanese
community hostile to its existence and soldiers whose role seems more designed
to keep the Rohingya inside rather than provide protection.[313] Many
of the neighborhood’s residents are stuck in IDP camps outside town after
having fled the city center during the June violence.[314]
Downtown Sittwe, which previously was a bustling economic center inhabited by
Buddhists, Muslims, and some Hindus, is now populated almost exclusively by
Arakanese Buddhists.[315] While the forced relocations in Sittwe were presumably
conducted to curtail the sectarian violence, the disparate treatment of the two
populations since then amounts to unlawful discrimination against Rohingya.[316]

The government has
constructed semi-permanent living structures in Ba Du Baw IDP camp, several kilometers
outside Sittwe. The authorities have insisted to UN agencies and the diplomatic
community that the camps were not envisioned as long-term “solutions.”
But the government has put forward no plan or taken any evident preliminary
steps suggesting that a return to homes was being considered, let alone put
into place. And no timeline for returns has been publicly or privately
discussed with the displaced populations.

Obstacles to Tolerance

The government’s failure to address the high levels of
animosity and intolerance between the Arakanese and Rohingya populations
– perhaps deliberately – complicates efforts to facilitate the
return of displaced Muslims. Both Rohingya and Arakanese who spoke with us said
that officials have not even broached the subject of reconciliation with
displaced populations.

One notable exception was the “peacekeeping
committee” formed in Kyauk Pyu after the June violence, which comprised
Arakanese Buddhists and Kaman Muslims. However, even this local effort was
unsuccessful in preventing violence against the Muslim community in October.[317]

Some government officials have asserted that the sectarian violence
was a symptom of “underdevelopment” caused in part by insufficient
international development assistance in Arakan State. Even if a contributing
factor, it would not absolve the government of directly addressing existing
intolerance particularly against the Muslim community.[318]

Opinion leaders in Burma have at times contributed to the
poor situation, rather than helping to resolve it. Most notably, parliamentary opposition
leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) party have
failed to condemn the rights abuses taking place in Arakan State or press for
accountability for those responsible.

Suu Kyi is especially well positioned to address the abuses
against Muslims. Beyond her international status as a Nobel peace prize winner,
she remains highly respected, especially among the majority ethnic Burman
population. She could use her moral authority to catalyze a national discourse
on discrimination and intolerance based on religion and ethnicity. Yet so far she
has just expressed a desire “not to take sides,” without offering much
more.[319]

In the absence of any apparent government commitment to end
the sectarian animosity and promote tolerance between the groups, displaced
Muslims expressed apprehension about returning to their villages and possibly
facing renewed attacks. Arakanese displaced from majority Muslim villages have
not prepared to return home, either.

The [government] authorities did not ask us any questions.
The army came and asked us if we wanted to go back. We replied that if we are
secure there and have food, we want to go back, but if we are not secure, we do
not want to go back. We cannot go reap our paddy without security. The
authorities did not say anything in response to that.[320]

Kaman Muslims, also told Human Rights Watch they had no hope
of returning home. A displaced Kaman man, 39, said, “I have no hope that
I can go back to Kyauk Pyu. I cannot say where I will settle later.”[321]

A displaced Arakanese woman from Laung Krat village in
Mrauk-U Township said, “If there are still Muslim people in the village
then we don’t want to go back.”[322] Another Arakanese
woman from Mrauk-U Township said, “There are only Muslim people there and
so there’s no security. That’s why we have no hope of going back
now.”[323]
Another displaced Arakanese woman, 68, from Yan Thei, said, “We
don’t want to go back home because we have no houses there now.”[324]

And those Muslims that are still in their home villages
expressed concern about their future safety. A Rohingya man, 30, from Yan Thei
village in Mrauk-U Township told Human Rights Watch: “I don’t think
I will be able to continue living in this village. We are surrounded by
Arakanese on all sides. If we want to go to another Rohingya village we have to
cross Arakanese villages first. Now it’s like we’re living inside a
jail.”[325]

VII.
Denial of Citizenship

The Burmese government has for many years rejected Rohingya
Muslims as a recognized “national race” and effectively denied them
the ability to obtain citizenship. This has facilitated human rights abuses
against them, and poses a serious obstacle to achieving long-term solutions to
the violence and abuse in Arakan State.

Citizenship

Human Rights Watch, UN agencies, and others have long recognized
the denial of citizenship to Rohingya as a root cause of the violence in Arakan
State.[326]
At the core of the problem is Burma’s discriminatory 1982 Citizenship
Law.

While countries have the authority to determine their own
criteria for conferring citizenship, this criteria must be in conformity with a
country’s international human rights obligations. Burma’s 1982
Citizenship Law and its application have effectively prevented ethnic Rohingya
from obtaining Burmese citizenship, resulting in an arbitrary deprivation of
citizenship in contravention of international human rights standards.[327]

OCHA and other international agencies have offered to
support the government to review the 1982 Citizenship Law to bring it in line
with international standards, yet the government has not availed itself of
these offers.[328]

The central government’s response to the question of
citizenship has recently involved a process of “citizenship
scrutiny” led by the Ministry of Immigration in Pauktaw Township, where
several thousand Rohingya IDPs are located. In December, a displaced Rohingya
told Human Rights Watch: “The immigration department is taking the
registration of the people, and on the paper where there is a space for
nationality, they do not put Rohingya, they put Bengali.”[329]
News reports confirmed government officers were determining the lineage of the
IDPs but registering their ethnicity as “Bengali” or
“Bengali/Islam.” When asked about the potential effect of this, a
Burmese officer said, "We're collecting data, not making decisions on
nationality."[330]

The UN and humanitarian organizations in Arakan State have
identified risks associated with the government’s response to the
citizenship issue. The UN’s November 2012 Rakhine Response Plan states:

In early November 2012, community members living in Pauk
Taw Township informed that Government officials had commenced a nationality
verification exercise. Lack of clear communication to the community on the
overall objective of the verification exercise, coupled with reports of
intimidation faced by the communities, might increase tensions within the community,
and trigger further inter-communal violence and displacement.[331]

Burma’s 1982 Citizenship Law designates three
categories of citizens: full citizens; associate citizens; and naturalized
citizens. Color-coded Citizenship Scrutiny Cards are issued according to
citizenship status – pink, blue, and green, respectively. Many Rohingya
hold white cards, or “temporary registration cards,” which come
with no citizenship rights. These national identity cards contain ethnic and
religious biographical details that facilitate discrimination by local
officials against Muslims and other religious and ethnic minorities.[332]

By law, full citizens are persons who belong to recognized
"national races" (the eight primary races are Arakanese, Burman,
Chin, Kachin, Karen, Karenni, Mon, and Shan) or those whose ancestors settled
in the country before 1823, when Britain became the colonial power in the
country. Under the 1948 law, individuals who could not provide evidence that
their ancestors settled in Burma before 1823 could still be eligible for
citizenship. But under the 1982 law, associate citizenship was only available
to those who met the qualifications and had already had applied for citizenship
before the 1982 law went into effect, excluding most Rohingya.

Under the 1982 law, those considered to be foreign nationals
can become naturalized citizens if they can provide "conclusive
evidence" that they or their parents entered and resided in Burma prior to
independence in 1948. Persons who have at least one parent who holds one of the
three types of Burmese citizenship are also eligible to become naturalized
citizens. Beyond these two qualifications, the 1982 act stipulates that a
person seeking to become a naturalized citizen must be at least 18 years old,
able to speak one of the national languages well (the Rohingya language is not
recognized as such), and be of good character, and sound mind.[333]
According to the terms of the law, only full and naturalized citizens are
“entitled to enjoy the rights of a citizen under the law, with the
exception from time to time of the rights stipulated by the State.” All
forms of citizenship, “except a citizen by birth,” may be revoked
by the state.[334]

Most Rohingya lack formal documents, and even those who come
from families that have lived in Burma for generations do not have any way of
providing “conclusive evidence” of their lineage in Burma prior to
1948, let alone prior to 1823, denying them Burmese citizenship.[335]
And although international law ensures non-citizens virtually all the rights of
citizens, except for political rights such as voting, the Burmese government
has long used the Rohingya’s absence of citizenship to deny them their
fundamental human rights. As the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Burma
has stated, the 1982 Citizenship Law “contravenes
generally accepted international norms to ensure that there is no State
sanctioned discrimination on the basis of religion and ethnicity.”[336]

The difficulty for Rohingya of providing “conclusive
evidence” of their lineage increased in June 2012, when during the
violence many Rohingya lost their documents in arson attacks or had them
forcibly taken. Several Rohingya told Human Rights Watch that during the
violence in June and October, local authorities or groups of Arakanese confiscated
their ID cards. A Rohingya woman who survived an attack by a group of Arakanese
said, “They [the attackers] brought a lot of cars and they were loading
our belongings into the cars. They even took our IDs.”[337]

A Rohingya woman who was displaced from Sittwe on June 10,
and beaten severely over the head by an Arakanese man with an iron rod, told
Human Rights Watch: “We kept all of our documents, my family list and my
... graduation certificate, in a bag. One [Arakanese] man came in and pointed
his sword at me and said, ‘Do you want to give me this or do you want to
die?’ I had to give him the bag.”[338]

A Rohingya man, 42, said he feared authorities were forcibly
relocating Rohingya outside Sittwe in a way that would create a paper trail
identifying the displaced as “guests” in Burma. He said:

A high-ranking immigration officer came today and said he
wanted a list of people who are taking shelter. He said he wanted a list so we
made a list. We were given a written form to fill out, and instead of referring
to displaced people, the form referred to “guest people.” We said,
“We are not guests here.” The immigration officer replied, “I
cannot do anything, this is from the higher authority. I just have to follow
orders.”[339]

When it has suited the government’s purposes, rights
are granted to the Rohingya. For example, non-citizen Rohingya in Arakan State
have at times in the past been given the right to vote. Rohingya were permitted
to vote and form political parties in the 1990 elections, and those holding
“temporary registration cards” could vote in the 2010 elections.
The vast majority of Rohingya who are registered to vote are members of the
ruling Union State and Development Party (USDP), giving the government a reason
to permit their vote.

Under the 1982 law, the children born to non-citizens do not
obtain citizenship, perpetuating the denial of citizenship to Rohingya over
generations. In order for a child to attain Burmese citizenship, at least one
parent must already hold one of the three types of Burmese citizenship.
Rohingya, who rarely can provide the government "conclusive evidence"
of their lineage or history of residence, have children who also are without
citizenship. In March 2012, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Burma
reported that “tens of thousands of children remain
unregistered” as a result of the citizenship law.[340]

In 1983, following the mass repatriation of Rohingya
refugees from Bangladesh in 1978, the Burmese government completed a nationwide
census in which the Rohingya were not counted, further rendering them stateless
through exclusion, compounding the stringencies of the 1982 law.

As noted above, many Burmese – officials and the
general public – describe the Rohingya as a “fabricated” or
“invented” group.[341]

Nationality

While some Rohingya trace
their lineage in Burma back centuries, many Muslims families in Arakan State migrated
to and settled in Arakan during the British colonial period, which under the
1982 Citizenship Law directly excludes them from full citizenship. Rohingya
whose families settled in the region during the colonial period would be
eligible for less-than-full citizenship but are in effect excluded because of
their inability to provide conclusive evidence of their lineage. Even those
Rohingya whose families settled in the region before 1823 face the onerous
burden of proving this to the satisfaction of the skeptical authorities, making
it nearly impossible to secure Burmese citizenship.

Ethnic Arakanese interviewed
by Human Rights Watch rejected the suggestion that the Rohingya should obtain
citizenship as a distinct ethnic group. Many said the international community
and, in particular, the international media are biased in favor of the
Rohingya. U Hla Soe, the general secretary of the Arakanese-dominated political
party RNDP, told Human Rights Watch:

We think that pro-Rohingya Islamic radicals have penetrated
the exiled media, so the voice of Rohingya becomes louder and louder. ... They
are demanding to be an ethnic nationality, and this we don’t accept. The
citizenship issue is very delicate. We hope that exiled radical forces in the West
will stop the instigation, because these Muslim people are ignorant people. It
is very easy to stimulate and instigate them.[342]

An Arakanese journalist told
Human Rights Watch:

Many [international] journalists want to defend the
Rohingya because they are losing, because they are the poorest people, the
persecuted people. I don’t blame them but they need to understand the
whole picture. When only one side of the story is told, the Arakanese people
are automatically regarded as cruel, and that is a problem.[343]

The “whole
picture” he referred to is the fear among Arakanese of losing their
cultural and ethnic identity to the Muslim population in Arakan State – it
is an existential fear involving race, religion, and economics.

An Arakanese man in Mrauk-U
Township said:

It is very, very difficult to live with the Muslim people
in Arakan State. ... They want to occupy the land. We were not living together
before 1824. The British controlled the Arakanese land in 1824 and they brought
the Bengali people to Arakan State to work the rice paddy fields. ... The
Bengali people are always thinking to start a problem. Other countries and
media will be interested about the Rohingya, and they know that.[344]

The National Census

The government of Burma and
the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has been working on a national
census, scheduled for completion in 2014. While the census is not a response to
the situation in Arakan State, it will factor heavily into development
priorities and will ultimately shape the government’s response to the
political and economic situation in the state. Burma’s last census in
1983 excluded the Rohingya.[345]
There are concerns the Rohingya will again be excluded from the census: in July
2012, Burma’s immigration minister, Khin Yi, announced the Rohingya would
not be included in the new census.[346]

In August, Dr. Babatunde
Osotimehin, the executive director of UNFPA, stressed the importance of
following UN international standards for conducting the census and committed
UNFPA to including all population groups in the count.[347] The
UNFPA intends to establish an advisory committee comprising representatives
from Burma’s ethnic nationalities to address concerns with the process;
teachers from ethnic groups will be recruited to conduct the census as
“enumerators” in their communities.[348] It is
unclear whether Rohingya educators in Arakan State will be hired to conduct an
objective census and whether Rohingya representatives will be appointed to the
advisory committee.

VIII. Legal Standards: Crimes Against Humanity and Ethnic
Cleansing

Crimes Against Humanity

Many of the serious abuses committed
against the Rohingya and other Muslims in Arakan State since June 2012 amount
to crimes against humanity.

According to the Rome Statute
of the International Criminal Court (ICC), crimes against humanity are certain
criminal acts, including murder, torture, and persecution “committed as
part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian
population, with knowledge of the attack.”[349]
International legal jurisprudence provides that the attack must be widespread
or systematic, but need not be both.[350]
“Widespread” refers to the scale of the acts or number of victims
and a “systematic” attack indicates “a pattern or methodical
plan.”[351]
The attack must also be part of a state or “organizational” policy.[352]

The "attack" does
not necessarily need to be a military attack as defined under international
humanitarian law, and "need not even involve military forces or armed
hostilities, or any violent force at all."[353]

Non-state organizations
– such as the RNDP and the Buddhist sangha (order of monks) in
Arakan State – can be responsible for crimes against humanity if they are
demonstrated to have a sufficient degree of organization. In its leading ruling
to date on this issue, the International Criminal Court’s Pre-Trial
Chamber stated that “the determination of whether a given group qualifies
as an organization under the [ICC’s Rome] Statute must be made on a
case-by-case basis,” taking “into account a number of
considerations,” including:

(i) whether the group is under a responsible command, or
has an established hierarchy; (ii) whether the group possesses, in fact, the means
to carry out a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population;
(iii) whether the group exercises control over part of the territory of a
State; (iv) whether the group has criminal activities against the civilian
population as a primary purpose; (v) whether the group articulates, explicitly
or implicitly, an intention to attack a civilian population; (vi) whether the
group is part of a larger group, which fulfills some or all of the
abovementioned criteria.[354]

The Pre-Trial Chamber
emphasized that these factors “do not constitute a rigid legal
definition, and do not need to be exhaustively fulfilled.”[355]

Forced population transfers,
forced deportation, and persecution are specific crimes against humanity set
out by the Rome Statute and other international courts that are particularly
relevant to the situation in Arakan State.

Deportation and Forced Population
Transfers

The expulsions of Rohingya
Muslims and Kaman Muslims from their neighborhoods and villages in Arakan State
in June and October 2012, and their subsequent treatment, amount to a Burmese
government policy of deportations and forced transfer of populations that
appear aimed at permanently removing Rohingya and other Muslims from their
current residences to other parts of Arakan State or outside of Burma
altogether, thus changing the state’s demographic nature. Widespread and
systematic attacks by Arakanese, with the participation of state security
forces in many instances, forcibly displaced over 125,000 Muslims from their homes.
At least another 20,000 others are known to have fled the country during that
time. Underlying these crimes was an evident goal of the majority Buddhist
population to drive out Muslim populations.

The authorities have
compelled the displaced Rohingya and Kaman populations to live in squalid
conditions for months without adequate food or other basic services, face
severe restrictions on their movements that greatly hinder their ability to
earn a livelihood, and endure abusive treatment from security forces. Rohingya
children in these displaced persons camps have been effectively cut off from
access to schools and education. Many Muslims in Arakan State have experienced
multiple displacements, in at least one case resulting in deaths.[356]
In areas damaged by violence throughout the state, municipal authorities have demolished
structurally sound mosques, sending a clear anti-Muslim message. The Burmese
government has restricted the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Rohingya, and
in some areas continues to do so.[357]
The government has also attempted to move displaced Rohingya and other Muslims to
areas where there has long been a high Muslim concentration – in the
north of the state – indicating intent to change the demographic profile
of the state by segregating the two primary religious communities.

Deportation and forcible
transfer of population are crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute of
the International Criminal Court (ICC).[358] Burma is not a party
to the ICC but the statute is considered to reflect customary international
law.

Deportation and forcible
transfer of population are distinguished by whether or not the victim was
forced across an international border:

Both deportation and forcible transfer relate to the
involuntary and unlawful evacuation of individuals from the territory in which
they reside. Yet, the two are not synonymous in customary international law.
Deportation presumes transfer beyond State borders, whereas forcible transfer
relates to displacements within a State.[359]

To be recognized as a crime
against humanity under the requirements put forth by the ICC, the deportation
also must be committed as "part of a widespread or systematic attack
directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack."[360]
Deportation has also been recognized as a crime against humanity in each of the
major international criminal instruments prior to the ICC.[361]

The crime of forcible
transfer of populations includes "the full range of coercive pressures on
people to flee their homes, including death threats, destruction of their
homes, and other acts of persecution such as depriving members of a group of
employment, denying them access to schools, and forcing them to wear a symbol
of their religious identity."[362]

After June 2012, the RNDP and
the Buddhist sangha in Arakan State both issued public statements and at
times spoke to the media, explicitly calling for the isolation, departure and removal
of Rohingya from Buddhist areas in the state.[363] Members
of these organizations committed apparent incitement to violence and
participated in attacks that were at least consistent with the expressed
positions of their organizations.

Both organizations led
efforts to organize the Arakanese community to end all interactions with the
Rohingya, with the apparent intention to economically weaken and socially
isolate, and eventually drive out the Muslim population of certain areas
– by denying them food and other basic services, access to income
generating activities, and restricting their ability to move or interact beyond
the strict confines of their neighborhoods or IDP camps. Members from both
organizations were involved in activities that led to violence that caused
population transfers of the Rohingya. State security forces and local
government officials indirectly supported these groups in their efforts, including
by not acting on advance knowledge of likely violence and failing to intervene
to stop or counteract them.

State security forces also participated
directly in the forced transfer of populations by committing violent acts such
as killings – in some cases, killings of children – and beatings.[364]
In June, attacks against the Rohingya Muslim population by state security
forces occurred primarily in the state capital, Sittwe, and northern Arakan
State. An immediate result was the clearing out of the Muslim population in all
areas of Sittwe with the exception of one neighborhood, Aung Mingalar.[365]
In October, groups of Arakanese acted alongside local state security forces
such the Nasaka, army, and police. In other cases the security forces simply
failed to intervene. In at least Kyauk Pyu and Pauktaw, local government
officials and members of RNDP were directly involved in meetings prior to the
commission of violent acts during which decisions are known to have been made
to coerce Muslims to flee.

During the June violence, the
security forces began abusive sweeps and mass arrests of hundreds of Rohingya
men and boys. The seeming randomness of these arrests, incommunicado detention,
and reports of torture and ill-treatment in detention have combined to instill
widespread fear in Muslim neighborhoods and villages.[366]

The requisite elements of the
crime against humanity of deportation or forcible transfer consist of coercing
movement to another location of people lawfully in the area with the intent of
permanently relocating them.[367]

First, the actions by the
RNDP and sangha in Arakan State, with the direct or indirect support of
the government have caused over 125,000 Rohingya Muslims and others "to
another location, by expulsion or other coercive acts."[368]

Second, the persons expelled
from their neighborhoods and townships in Arakan State – Rohingya and
Kaman Muslims – "were lawfully present in the area from which they
were deported or transferred."[369]
Any claim by the authorities that the displaced families, many who have lived
in their townships and neighborhoods for generations, were not lawfully
permitted in their homes because they are “illegal immigrants,” ignores
the discriminatory treatment of Rohingya under the citizenship law and other
legislation and practice.[370]
The Kaman Muslims are Burmese citizens so there is no issue as to the
lawfulness of their presence.

Finally, the intent to expel
the Rohingya from their neighborhoods and villages by the RNDP and sangha is
evident from the public statements calling for such action. Evidence of
government intent can be found in both the actions and inaction of state
security forces, combined with the longtime discriminatory state practices
against the Rohingya, such as restrictions on freedom of movement, marriage,
childbirth, education, and employment.

For decades the Burmese
government has made conditions extremely difficult for the Rohingya through
severe restrictions and human rights violations. As a result, tens of thousands
have been compelled to move from their homes or flee the country. This
longstanding situation, exacerbated by events since June 2012, amounts to a
Burmese government policy of deportation and forcible transfer. UN bodies for
at least two decades have consistently acknowledged deportation of Rohingya
from Arakan State, and the abuses that contribute to it. Successive UN special rapporteurs
have often identified these abuses in terms explicitly suggesting the
commission of international crimes, such as “widespread,”
“systematic,” and as a result of “state policy.”[371]The current UN special
rapporteur on human rights in Burma, Tomas Quintana, reported in 2010:

Discrimination [against the Rohingya]
leads to forced deportation and restriction of movement owing to the enduring
condition of statelessness, which is the result of the Rohingyas’
historic difficulty in obtaining citizenship, particularly following the
enactment of the 1982 Citizenship Act. Acts of land confiscation, forced
relocation and eviction through violent means also appear to be widespread and
systematic. Finally, discrimination leads to persecution, which can be defined
as intentional and severe deprivation of fundamental rights contrary to
international law by reason of the identity of the group or collectivity.[372]

Persecution

Persecution is recognized as among the offenses considered
to be crimes against humanity.[373] The
ICC statute defines persecution as “the intentional and severe
deprivation of fundamental rights contrary to international law by reason of
the identity of the group or collectivity.”[374]
The crime of persecution consists of an act or omission that 1) entails actual
discrimination and denies a fundamental human right, and 2) was carried out
deliberately with the intention of discriminating on one of the recognized
grounds.[375] These
include for political, national, ethnic, and religious reasons.[376]
Persecutory acts have been found to include murder, sexual assault, beatings, destruction
of livelihood, and deportation and forced transfer, among others.[377]

Both acts of violence and other apparently discriminatory
actions – such as the majority Buddhist community depriving Rohingya of
access to their livelihoods or to food to force them to leave – might be
considered acts of persecution that amount to crimes against humanity.

"Ethnic Cleansing"

Human Rights Watch has documented a pattern of human rights
violations in Arakan State that amount to “ethnic cleansing” of the
Rohingya and other Muslims from their areas of residence. Although
“ethnic cleansing” is not formally defined under international law,
a UN Commission of Experts has defined the term as a “purposeful policy
designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and
terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious
group from certain geographic areas. . . . This purpose appears to be the
occupation of territory to the exclusion of the purged group or groups.”[378]

Commenting on the situation in the former Yugoslavia in the
early 1990s, the Commission of Experts stated:

[T]he patterns of conduct, the manner in which these acts
were carried out, the length of time over which they took place and the areas
in which they occurred combine to reveal a purpose, systematicity, and some
planning and coordination from higher authorities. Furthermore, these
practices are carried out by persons from all segments of the Serbian
population in the areas described: members of the army, militias, special forces,
the police and civilians. Lastly, the Commission notes that these unlawful
acts are often heralded by the perpetrators as positive, patriotic
accomplishments.[379]

The UN Committee on the
Elimination of Racial Discrimination found that attempts to alter permanently
the ethnic make-up of a region are contrary to international law: it noted that
"any attempt to change or uphold a changed demographic composition of an
area, against the will of the original inhabitants, by whichever means, is a
violation of international law."[380] The United Nations
has also repeatedly characterized the practice of ethnic cleansing during an
armed conflict as a violation of international humanitarian law, and has
demanded that perpetrators of ethnic cleansing be brought to justice.[381]

As discussed above, the orchestrated
violence in Arakan State, particularly in October, involved near simultaneous
attacks by Arakanese against Rohingya villages and settlements. The violence,
largely carried out by mobs armed with a variety of weapons, appeared organized
and inspired by higher entities, including the RNDP and the sangha. State
security forces stood by and watched or participated in the killing, and later
disposed of the bodies in a manner that hindered rather than helped
investigations.

Perhaps most indicative of
all, ethnic cleansing was reflected in the terror tactics of the Arakanese
attackers. According to survivors, the mobs relentlessly killed all those they
could catch. They hacked children to death with machetes and threw some into
fires. Muslim neighborhoods and entire villages were burned to the ground. State
security forces deprived the outnumbered Muslims of their weapons in
anticipation of the slaughter. And when the slaughter happened, they dumped the
Rohingya bodies in areas inhabited by Rohingya displaced persons – no
doubt to send a message of terror.

Right to Return Home

International law provides a
remedy for persons victim to the crime against humanity of deportation and forced
and arbitrary transfer. They are entitled to return to their home areas and
property.[382]
This right is related to the right to
return to one's home country – the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides that, "Everyone has the right … to return to his country."[383] Some international
human rights instruments recognize this right.[384] Although
there is no specific provision in international covenants affirming the right
of internally displaced persons to return to their places of origin, that right
would be protected by the “right to freedom of movement and
residence” within the borders of a country.[385]

The Sub-Commission on the
Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, which operated under the former UN
Human Rights Commission, reaffirmed "the right of all refugees and
internally displaced persons to return to their homes and places of habitual
residence in their country and/or place of origin, should they so wish.”[386]
The UN Security Council and other UN bodies have also repeatedly asserted the
right of internally displaced persons to return to their former homes. The
Security Council, in its Resolution 820 (1993) dealing with Bosnia and
Herzegovina, stated "all displaced persons have the right to return in
peace to their former homes and should be assisted to do so."[387]

Also applicable to the
situation in Arakan State are the UN Guiding Principles on Displacement,[388]
which are drawn from accepted principles of international law.[389] The
Guiding Principles set out provisions relating to return, resettlement and reintegration
of Internally Displaced Persons.[390] Principle 28 states:

Competent authorities have the primary duty and
responsibility to establish conditions, as well as provide the means, which
allow internally displaced persons to return voluntarily, in safety and with
dignity, to their homes or places of habitual residence, or to resettle voluntarily
in another part of the country. Such authorities shall endeavour to facilitate
the reintegration of returned or resettled internally displaced persons.[391]

This principle further
provides that special efforts should be made to ensure the full participation
of all internally displaced persons in the planning and management of such
processes. The participation of women, in particular, is considered essential.

Right to Redress

International law provides
for victims of human rights violations to receive adequate compensation. The
Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides that, “Everyone has the
right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals” for
acts violating fundamental rights.[392]

The UN Committee on the
Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), in its General Recommendation
XXII, says compensation should be provided for those refugees and displaced who
are able to return and have lost property:

All refugees and displaced persons have, after their return
to their homes of origin, the right to have restored to them property of which
they were deprived in the course of the conflict and to be compensated
appropriately for any such property that cannot be restored to them.[393]

When displaced persons are
unable to return to their homes because their property has been destroyed, they
are entitled to compensation. The UN Commission on Human Rights recognized the
need for property restitution as an effective remedy for forced displacement.[394]

The Guiding Principles
provide that:

Competent authorities have the duty and responsibility to
assist returned and/or resettled internally displaced persons to recover, to
the extent possible, their property and possessions which they left behind or
were dispossessed of upon their displacement. When recovery of such property
and possessions is not possible, competent authorities shall provide or assist
these persons in obtaining appropriate compensation or another form of just
reparation.[395]

The right to return needs to
be conducted in a manner that does not further violate human rights. The UN
Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, under the UN
Commission on Human Rights, urged "all states to ensure the free and fair
exercise of the right to return to one's home and place of habitual residence
by all refugees and internally displaced persons and to develop effective and
expeditious legal and administrative procedures to ensure the free and fair
exercise of this right, including fair and effective mechanisms to resolve
outstanding housing and property problems."[396]

As noted, the
Rohingya’s lack of citizenship has resulted in their being denied
fundamental rights, such as restrictions on land and property ownership. Addressing
the discriminatory provisions in the 1982 Citizenship Law that effectively deny
Rohingya citizenship is crucial for ensuring Rohingya receive adequate
compensations for violations of their rights.

Moreover, any attempt to
redress past abuses and to repossess private property should be free of
violence, intimidation, and threats. The potential for hostility against
Rohingya and Kaman Muslims from local Arakanese, Buddhist monks, political party
activists, state security forces, and government officials remains high, and
could complicate returns unless the authorities take proactive measures. [397]
In order to prevent renewed violence and state-sanctioned abuse against the
Rohingya, any program to implement the right to return of the displaced
communities should ensure that persons who have their claims legally recognized
can actually return to their homes in safety.[398]

Moreover, the government of
Burma is obligated to ensure that those who may not have lawful or other rights
to dwell within the housing or property registered to returnees do not become
homeless or subject to other human rights violations. According to the UN
Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights:

Evictions should not result in rendering individuals
homeless or vulnerable to the violation of other human rights. Where those
affected are unable to provide for themselves, the State party must take all
appropriate measures, to the maximum of its available resources, to ensure that
adequate alternative housing, resettlement or access to productive lands, as
the case may be, is available.[399]

IX. Recommendations

To the Government of Burma

Justice
and Accountability

Fully, promptly, and
impartially investigate those responsible for serious abuses in connection
with the sectarian violence in Arakan State and prosecute them fairly to
the fullest extent of the law, regardless of rank or position.

Agree to the establishment
of an independent international mechanism to investigate serious
violations of international human rights law, including possible crimes
against humanity, committed by security forces and non-state actors in
Arakan State.

Provide unfettered access
to Arakan State for the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights
in Burma, and for representatives of the UN Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

Authorize and facilitate establishment
of an OHCHR office in Burma with a mandate for rights protection,
promotion, and technical assistance; and permit OHCHR to set up branch offices
as needed elsewhere in the country, including in Arakan State.

Invite the UN special
rapporteur on freedom of religion and belief to visit and report on the
situation in Arakan State.

Publicly release the
findings of the presidential commission tasked with investigating the
situation in Arakan State that were already submitted to the government,
and any future findings of the commission.

Immediately make public
information about the fate of all the hundreds of Rohingya and Arakanese
detained since the security operations began in June 2012 in Arakan State.
Ensure that anyone in detention has access to legal counsel of their
choosing and to family members; detainees that have not been charged with
a criminal offense should be released.

Release Dr. Tun Aung and
other political prisoners arrested in Arakan State since June 2012.

Amend the legislation creating
the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission to ensure its independence
and other requirements of the Paris Principles on national human rights
commissions.

Ratify the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Ratify the 1951 Convention
relating to the Status of Statelessness and the 1961 Convention on the
Reduction of Statelessness.

Ratify the Rome Statute of
the International Criminal Court.

Humanitarian
Aid and Access

Provide safe and unhindered
humanitarian access for UN agencies and international and national
humanitarian organizations to all affected populations in Arakan State.

Allow unhindered access for
humanitarian organizations to all detention facilities in Arakan State holding
persons in connection with the sectarian violence.

Prevention
of Human Rights Violations

Revise legislation as
necessary and ensure state practice upholds the equal rights of Rohingya
and other Muslims in Burma in accordance with international human rights
law.

Immediately order
government security forces, including Nasaka, police, and army, to stop
mass arrests of Rohingya or other group on account of their ethnic,
religious or other status.

Undertake an independent
expert review of the
border guard force, Nasaka, to reorganize it as necessary to end abusive
practices.

Ensure that law enforcement
officials do not use excessive or unnecessary force, and operate in
accordance with the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms.

Rescind provisions of the
state of emergency in Arakan State that permit for arrests without necessary
due process safeguards.

Launch a public information
campaign promoting tolerance and non-discrimination.

Develop a long-term plan in
consultation with affected communities to end discrimination and promote
tolerance in Arakan State.

Ensure high-level national
government officials make clear public statements endorsing non-discrimination
and the right of all individuals in Arakan State to equal protection of
the law.

Treatment
of Internally Displaced Persons

Treat all internally
displaced persons (IDPs) in accordance with the UN Guiding Principles on
Internal Displacement.

Immediately lift all
unnecessary restrictions on freedom of movement of the Rohingya population,
and ensure they are able to pursue livelihoods, purchase essentials and
return to their homes and recover property, providing protection as needed.
Make available alternative locations to accommodate IDPs and refugees who
do not wish to return to their places of origin and instead relocate to
other areas or remain in areas in the vicinity of their displacement.

Ensure that returns of
displaced persons and refugees take place in accordance with international
standards, on a voluntary basis with attention to the safety and dignity
of the returning population.

Initiate and sustain
reconciliation programs with local communities to promote and facilitate
the voluntary return and reintegration of refugees and IDPs.

Citizenship

Urgently amend the 1982
Citizenship Law to eliminate provisions that are discriminatory or have a
discriminatory impact on determining citizenship for reasons of ethnicity,
race, religion or other protected status. Ensure that the amended law is
enforced to provide citizenship without discrimination.

Revise the
Citizenship Act in accordance with article 7 of the Convention on the
Rights of the Child to ensure that Rohingya children have the right to
acquire a nationality where otherwise they would be stateless.

Cease including ethnic and
religious biographical details on national identity cards, as a matter of
anti-discrimination practice and policy

National
Census

Ensure that the national
census currently underway, directed by the Ministry of Immigration and
Population and supported by the UN Population Fund, fully complies with
international standards, is non-discriminatory, and covers all populations
in Burma, including Rohingya.

Ensure that Rohingya are
employed to conduct the census in Rohingya areas and communities in Arakan
State.

To the Neighboring States of
Thailand, Malaysia, and Bangladesh

Immediately open borders to
Rohingya asylum seekers and provide them with at least temporary
protection. Order naval security forces to cease pushbacks of boats of
asylum seekers fleeing Burma and inform coastal villages to do the same.

Provide unfettered access
for UNHCR and other humanitarian agencies to provide assistance to fleeing
Rohingya asylum seekers and ensure that they have adequate food, shelter,
and protection.

Allow UNHCR access to
register and assist arriving Rohingya, and to conduct refugee status
determination screening for those seeking asylum, including all those
designated by the UNHCR as in “a refugee-like situation” but
whose status has not yet been verified.

Coordinate and agree upon
search and rescue procedures so that the immediate humanitarian needs of
asylum seekers and migrants are met and responsibility is shared.

Permit officially
recognized Rohingya refugees in the Bangladesh-based Nayapara and
Kutupalong camps to take up offers of third-country resettlement without
hindrance.

Allow unregistered and
undocumented Rohingya from Arakan State living in Bangladesh to lodge
refugee claims.

Provide domestic and
international media, nongovernmental organizations, and foreign diplomats unfettered
access to the areas where Rohingya fleeing Burma are arriving.

Press the Burmese government
to end human rights violations and discriminatory policies, including with
respect to citizenship, against the Rohingya and other vulnerable
minorities, making clear that such actions will harm Burma’s
bilateral relationships and international standing.

Use the Bali Process to
forge a regional consensus to protect the rights of Rohingya fleeing by boat,
and press ASEAN to adopt that consensus.

To Concerned Governments,
including Australia, Canada, Japan, US, and EU Member States:

Press the Burmese
government to allow the UN special rapporteur on Burma to conduct an
independent investigation into abuses in Arakan State; express support for
an OHCHR office in Burma with a full protection, promotion, and technical
assistance mandate, and sub-offices in states around the country,
including in Arakan State. Provide sufficient resources to allow the
special rapporteur on Burma and OHCHR to be able to carry out these
activities.

Call on the Burmese
government to permit diplomatic missions in Burma to travel to affected
areas, including displaced person sites.

Provide financial and
technical support to UN agencies and humanitarian organizations providing
assistance in Arakan State and for refugees and asylum seekers in
Bangladesh; publicly promote unfettered access for humanitarian agencies
and the delivery of humanitarian assistance to all populations in need.

Publicly press Burmese
authorities to end discrimination and violence against Rohingya and other
vulnerable minorities, making clear that such actions will harm Burma’s
bilateral relationships and international standing.

Support reconciliation
efforts between the Arakan and Rohingya populations in Arakan State, and
publicly press the Burmese government to reform the discriminatory 1982
Citizenship Law and bring it into line with international standards.

To United Nations Agencies and
the Donor Community:

Provide sufficient
resources and other support (including OHCHR staff support) to enable the
UN special rapporteur on Burma to conduct a full investigation into abuses
in Arakan State.

Ensure that humanitarian
aid is delivered impartially to all populations in need in Arakan State,
including those not displaced; raise concerns publicly when humanitarian
access to communities in need is blocked.

Urge the Burmese government
to permit the resumption of assistance programs in northern Arakan State
that were suspended in June 2012.

Ensure that any assessments
of the humanitarian situation in Arakan State include not only the
communities affected by sectarian violence but also those affected by abusive
security force sweeps since June 2012.

Ensure that the national
census, currently underway and supported by the United Nations Population
Fund, meets international standards, is non-discriminatory, and covers all
populations in Burma, including Rohingya.

Provide support for the
national census only on the basis that Rohingya representatives are
appointed to the ethnic advisory committee for the census, and that Rohingya
are hired to conduct the census questionnaires in Arakan State.

To the World Bank, Asian
Development Bank, and Other Donors:

Ensure that any future
development projects in Arakan State are explicitly conditioned on
non-discrimination in provision of assistance and take into account the
impact of planned projects on both Rohingya and Arakanese communities.

Ensure that any future
development projects in Arakan State do not discriminate in any way
against Rohingya on the basis that they are not Burmese citizens under the
1982 Citizenship Act.

Acknowledgments

This report was researched
and written by Matthew Smith, consultant for Human Rights Watch. It was edited
by Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch; James Ross,
legal and policy director; and Joseph Saunders, deputy program director.
Portions of the report were also reviewed by Bill Frelick, Refugee director,
and Bede Sheppard, senior researcher in the Child Rights division.

We extend special thanks to
all those individuals and organizations who aided in this research and who
generously shared their time, energy, and experiences with Human Rights Watch.

Appendix
I: History of Violence and Abuse
against Rohingya

This appendix describes abusive campaigns by successive
governments in Burma to marginalize and at times forcibly remove ethnic
Rohingya Muslims in Arakan State.

For over two decades, United Nations institutions have
extensively documented human rights violations against the Rohingya in Burma,
including forced displacement and deportation.[400] UN
agencies and special rapporteurs have consistently documented abuses such as
killings, rape, property destruction, and forced labor of Rohingya, sometimes
describing them as “systematic” and a part of state policy.[401]

Tension and animosity between the majority Buddhist
population and Muslims in Arakan State can be traced at least to British
colonial rule. During World War II, the predominantly ethnically Burman Burma
Independence Army (BIA) fought in support of the Japanese against the British,
while most of the minority ethnic nationalities, including the Rohingya
Muslims, remained loyal to the British.[402]
The Arakanese were one of the few ethnic minorities that joined with the BIA in
fighting the Allied forces.[403]
This led to violent clashes between Arakanese and Rohingya during the war, and
to this day both sides speak of “massacres” and “raids”
committed by each side against the other at that time.[404]

Burma obtained its independence from Britain in 1948.
Shortly thereafter, a Muslim armed rebellion began in Arakan State, demanding
creation of an independent Muslim state within Burma in the area that is now
northern Arakan State. The Muslim rebels numbered several thousand in 1948 and
then quickly dwindled to “just a handful by 1950.”[405]
In 1962, a coup led by Gen. Ne Win marked the beginning of decades of
oppressive military rule.

Throughout military rule in Burma there were numerous
Buddhist-Muslim clashes in Arakan State in which the military government led
campaigns of violence against the Rohingya population. The government also
adopted laws and policies that resulted in widespread discrimination and other
human rights violations against the Rohingya.

In 1977, the Burmese
government initiated a national census program called Naga Min (Dragon
King) to “scrutinize each individual living in the State, designating
citizens and foreigners in accordance with the law and taking actions against
foreigners who have filtered into the country illegally.”[406]
In Arakan State, Naga Min metamorphosed into a targeted campaign to
forcibly drive out Rohingya Muslims. The authorities conducted brutal mass
arrests in house-to-house raids, violently rounding up thousands of Rohingya.[407]
State security forces, sometimes acting in collusion with local Arakanese,
committed killings and torture, and razed entire Rohingya villages.[408]
Over 200,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh.[409] The government did
not deny that violence occurred but held the Rohingya responsible, blaming it
on “armed bands of Bengalis,” “rampaging Bengali mobs,”
and “wild Muslim extremists.”[410]

The Bangladesh government
denied humanitarian access and withheld food aid to the Rohingya refugees to
force them back to Burma, and more than 12,000 starved to death.[411]
In July 1979, Burmese President Ne Win agreed to a repatriation program with
Bangladesh whereby the Rohingya were forcibly returned to areas primarily in
northern Arakan State, away from major Arakanese population centers. The Northern
Arakan State region has increasingly become an area of religious and ethnic
concentration for the Rohingya.[412]

In 1982, the military government enacted a national
citizenship law that effectively stripped the Rohingya of Burmese citizenship.
The following year the government published the findings of a nationwide census
that excluded the Rohingya, thereby cementing their statelessness.[413]
The current UN special rapporteur on Burma, Tomas Quintanaobserved that the 1982 Citizenship Law
“contravenes generally accepted international norms to ensure that there
is no State sanctioned discrimination on the basis of religion and
ethnicity.”[414]

In the early 1990s the military dramatically increased its
presence in northern Arakan State, constructing roads and barracks with forced
labor, confiscating land and property, and forcibly deporting some Rohingya to
Bangladesh, while transferring others from various townships to northern Arakan
State.[415]
The security forces were also implicated in summary executions, rape, and
torture. Mosques were destroyed by the state—and in some cases replaced
with Buddhist temples—and Muslim religious activities were banned.[416]
Continuing abuses caused Rohingya at times to flee to Bangladesh at the rate of
several thousand per day.[417]

The abuses against the Rohingya were very different in
character from those occurring during this period against other ethnic minority
populations. Elsewhere the Burmese army was engaged in often long-running armed
conflicts with ethnic armed groups, and the unlawful attacks on those civilian
populations grew out of those conflicts. In the case of the Rohingya, non-state
armed groups called the Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO) and the Arakan
Rohingya Islamic Front (ARIF) were established in northern Arakan State in 1982
and 1987, respectively, but these groups and others never posed a serious
threat to the Burmese military state, their principal target, nor to Burmese
society.[418]
The Rohingya armed element was “small and not a significant fighting force
comparable to the Karen guerrillas or other insurgent armies in the
east.”[419]
Instead, the Burmese security forces committed widespread abuses targeting the
Rohingya population in an apparent effort to force their relocation. As Human
Rights Watch noted in a 1992 report, the government did “not even attempt
to justify the campaign against the Rohingya in terms of
counterinsurgency.”[420]

Between mid-1991 and early 1992, more than a quarter million
Rohingya crossed the Naf River into Teknaf and Cox’s Bazaar in
Bangladesh. Bangladesh was again hostile to the asylum seekers and forced them
into squalid refugee settlements.[421]

In 1992, the Burmese government established Nay-Sat Kut-kwey
Ye (Nasaka), a border guard force comprising the army, police,
immigration, and customs officials. Nasaka enforces many of the restrictions
against the Rohingya in Arakan State, particularly in the predominantly Muslim
townships of northern Arakan State. Nasaka has law enforcement,
military, and administrative authority, unlike other security forces in the
country.

From late 1992 through 1993, Bangladesh forcibly repatriated
approximately 50,000 Rohingya to Burma by mistreating those in the camps
through beatings, the denial of food rations, and other abuses.[422]
The vast majority who returned to Burma were believed to have done so
involuntarily, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR),
the UN refugee agency was unable to trace them upon their return.[423]
Burmese troops receiving them used excessive force, including killings.[424]

In 1994, UNHCR established a small field presence in Arakan
State and started promoting mass repatriation on the grounds that the situation
was conducive to return. These repatriations occurred alongside the wide-scale forced
transfer of Rohingya from the state capital, Sittwe, and other areas to
Maungdaw and Buthidaung in northern Arakan State.[425]

Lt. Gen. Mya Thinn, then minister for home affairs, informed the UN special rapporteur on
human rights in Burma that Arakan State’s Muslims were ineligible for
citizenship under the 1982 law and that they were not even registered as
so-called foreign residents. As a result their status did not permit them to
travel within the country.[426]

In addition to the violent abuses, Rohingya in Arakan State
have been subjected to “racially based
restrictions.” Reports by UN rapporteurs dating back to 1996 have described the restrictions as “severe” and
“unreasonable.” The 1996 special rapporteur report concluded,
“The Government’s policy violates freedom of movement and residence
and, in some cases, constitutes discriminatory practices based on ethnic
considerations.”[427]

The special rapporteur Rajsoomer Lallah in January 2000
reported that there were six major circumstances that led to massive outflows
of Rohingya from Burma— conditions that would amount to unlawful
deportation:

(1) The lack of citizenship and, by extension, nationality
rights; (2) Imposed restrictions on movement by the [Burmese] authorities; (3)
Forced labor and portering for the army; (4) Compulsory food donations,
extortion and arbitrary taxation; (5) Land confiscation or relocation; and (6)
Deliberate food (rice) shortages in combination with high prices. These
factors, coupled with systematic human rights violations and imposed
underdevelopment, led to the mass exodus of Rohingyas.[428]

In 2001, mobs attacked Muslim communities in various parts
of the country, with the most violent clashes happening in Sittwe. Arakanese
targeted mosques and other structures, and there were “an unknown number
of deaths and injuries and widespread looting and destruction of
property.”[429] In
July 2002, at least 28 mosques and madrassas were destroyed. State security
forces failed to intervene, and in some cases participated in the violence.[430]
In January 2002, Sergio Pinheiro, then UN special rapporteur on human rights in
Burma, reported that, “in some cases, tensions may have
been encouraged by local authorities who intervened only at a late stage to
stop the violence.”[431]

Beyond these waves of violence, state security forces have
routinely conscripted Rohingya for forced labor, and have committed killings,
rape, torture, land confiscation, forced relocations, and arbitrary
taxation. The systematic denial of citizenship rights has facilitated
unlawful restrictions on movement, education, marriage, employment, and other
aspects of daily life.[432]

UN Special Rapporteur Quintana reported in
2010:

Discrimination [against the Rohingya]
leads to forced deportation and restriction of movement owing to the enduring
condition of statelessness, which is the result of the Rohingyas’
historic difficulty in obtaining citizenship, particularly following the
enactment of the 1982 Citizenship Act. Acts of land confiscation, forced
relocation and eviction through violent means also appear to be widespread and
systematic. Finally, discrimination leads to persecution, which can be defined
as intentional and severe deprivation of fundamental rights contrary to
international law by reason of the identity of the group or collectivity.[433]

Concerns about systematic violations against the Rohingya in
Arakan State persisted prior to the onset of violence in Arakan State in June
2012. According to a UN official, in 2012 the Nasaka arbitrarily detained
between 2,000 and 2,500 Rohingya for “offenses” such as repairing
homes without permission.[434]
Those in custody were often beaten and mistreated, and could only secure their
release through payments to Nasaka commanders, usually through brokers or
middlemen.[435]

In March 2012, three months before the onset of violence,
the UN special rapporteur reported to the UN Human Rights Council about the “denial of citizenship [of Rohingya], restrictions
on their freedom of movement, marriage restrictions and other discriminatory
policies.” He noted that “tens of thousands of children remain
unregistered” as a matter of policy, and are thus stateless.[436]

The documentation of abuses by local and international
nongovernmental organizations, as well as UN institutions, made clear the
severity of the problems, but the abuses against the Rohingya continued.

Appendix II: Reply from the Burmese Government to Questions
Submitted by Human Rights Watch to President Thein Sein – March 27, 2013

Human Rights Watch is a nongovernmental organization based
in New York that monitors violations of human rights by states and non-state
actors in more than 90 countries around the world.

Human Rights Watch is preparing a report regarding the
situation in Arakan State. Our report explores issues of sectarian violence,
killings, forced displacement, and access to humanitarian assistance. The
report is based in part on in-depth interviews conducted with ethnic Arakanese
and Rohingya civilians in Arakan State and Bangladesh.

We are writing to ensure that our report properly reflects
the views, policies, and practices of the government of the Republic of the
Union of Myanmar regarding the events in Arakan State.

Human Rights Watch is committed to producing material that
is well-informed and objective. We hope you or your staff will respond in a
timely way to the attached questions so that your views are accurately
reflected in our reporting. In order for us to take your answers into account
in our forthcoming report, we would appreciate a written response by February
18, 2013.

Please do not hesitate to send to us any other materials,
statistics, and information about government actions regarding the violence
between the Arakanese and the Rohingya populations in Arakan State that you
think will be relevant.

We look forward to having a dialogue and engagement in
pursuit of human rights issues with the government of Myanmar.

Thank you for your time in addressing these urgent matters.

Sincerely,

Brad Adams

Director

Asia Division

Cc:

Lieutenant General Ko Ko, Minister of Home Affairs

U Wunna Maung Lwin, Minister of Foreign Affairs

Major General Thein Htay, Minister of Border Affairs

Ko Ko Hlaing, Chief Political Advisor to the
President’s Office

U Ye Htut, Deputy Minister for the Ministry of Information

Questions
from Human Rights Watch to the

Government
of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar

During the June 2012 violence in Arakan State, Human
Rights Watch reported on abuses by government security forces. What specific
actions did the government take after June 2012 to prevent the resurgence of
sectarian violence and abuses by state security forces in Arakan State? What
steps are being taken now to prevent further violence after the events in
October 2012?

Please provide information about the number of deaths and
injured of all ethnic groups in Arakan State since June 2012. What method is
the government using to record deaths and injuries?

What did the authorities do with the bodies of those
killed during the sectarian violence in Arakan State? What was the procedure
for handling the bodies? Where are the location(s) of the bodies?

How many Rohingya and Arakanese have been arrested in
connection with the sectarian violence since June? How many have been charged
with offenses and how many have been released from custody?

How many cases connected to the sectarian violence since
June 2012 are being prosecuted? Please provide a list including details of the
cases, information about the defendants, the charges brought, and the locations
of the defendants.

Have any persons detained in connection with the
sectarian violence in Arakan State died in custody? If so, please explain the
cause of death in each case.

It is our understanding that significant and severe
humanitarian needs persist in camps of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in
Arakan State, especially those camps housing Rohingya and Kaman Muslims. Do you
believe the aid reaching the camps is adequate or not? If not, why not? What
steps are the government taking to ensure sufficient aid can reach the camps?

How will the government facilitate the return of
displaced Rohingya, Kaman Muslims, and Buddhist Arakanese, to their homes in
Arakan State. What provisions of assistance will be provided for basic needs
and to re-start their lives? What is the estimated timeline for these
activities?

It is our understanding that the government has reduced
the permissible programs of several humanitarian organizations operating in
Arakan State since the violence began in June 2012. Why were their programs
reduced? What steps are being taken to ensure that communities not displaced by
the violence get sufficient assistance?

What challenges are faced by the relevant authorities to
investigate and prosecute abuses during the sectarian violence in Arakan State
in which state security forces – including members of the armed forces,
police and militias – were implicated? How are these challenges being
overcome?

What challenges does the justice system face in
prosecuting alleged perpetrators of violence in Arakan State? How are these
challenges being overcome?

What is the disciplinary structure within Nasaka, Lon
Thein, and the Burmese armed forces? Please describe specific examples of its
use, with specific reference to instances in Arakan State since June 2012.

Please explain why the government refers to the ethnic
Rohingya population in Arakan State as “Bengali,” and
“so-called Rohingya”?

In a statement released on November 18, 2012, prior to
US President Barack Obama’s visit, President Thein Sein stated with
respect to the situation in Arakan State that the government would
“address contentious political dimensions, ranging from resettlement of
displaced populations to granting of citizenship.” Can you please explain
how the government intends to address the issue of legal status and citizenship
for Rohingya?

[2] The RNDP has seven seats in the 224-seat Amyotha Hluttaw, or upper
house, and eight seats in the 440-seat Pyithu Hluttaw, or lower house.

[3] In June, Eleven Media stated that the “risk and
danger of ethnic cleansing or genocide [by Rohingya against Arakanese and
Burmans] was possible.” Than Htut Aung, “I Will Tell the Real
Truth,” Eleven Media, June 26, 2012,
http://eversion.news-eleven.com/opinion/91-i-will-tell-the-real-truth-3
(accessed February 11, 2013).

[4] Association of Young Monks, “Announcement to All Arakanese
Nationals,” June 29, 2012, on file with Human Rights Watch. See also,
Human Rights Watch,Burma–The Government Could Have Stopped This: Sectarian
Violence and Ensuing Abuses in Burma’s Arakan State,
August 2012,
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2012/08/01/government-could-have-stopped, pp. 40-41.

[6] “The following 12-point statement agreed and decided at the
meeting of monks from the various groups from Rathedaung Township, Rakhine
State, held at ‘Myo Ma’ Pavilion on 5th of July 2012
(Thursday) at 1:00 p.m.,” provided to Human Rights Watch by the Arakan
Project, November 2012.

[9] Mrauk-U Monks' Association, public statement, released July 9,
2012. Provided to Human Rights Watch by the Arakan Project, November 2012.

[10] The US foreign policy think-tank Center for Strategic and
International Studies writes of the RNDP’s Aye Maung: “Aye Maung is
notoriously known for his stance against the Muslim Rohingyas in Rakhine
[Arakan]...he has repeatedly called for the
segregation and resettlement of the Rohingyas in third countries, as well as
objecting any granting of citizenship to the Rohingyas. Aye Maung has often
sought to ignite Rakhine [Arakanese] nationalistic sentiment against Muslims
during his public appearances. When the government declared a state of
emergency in Rakhine [Arakan] in October following the latest outbreak of
violence originating in the town of Kyaukpyu and the president’s office
announced that an armed group was responsible, it was implicitly understood
that Aye Maung had called for and supported this new round of armed conflict.”
“The Leaderboard: Aye Maung,” Center for Strategic and
International Studies,” December 18, 2012,
http://cogitasia.com/the-leaderboard-aye-maung/ (accessed February 11, 2013).

[26] Quoted in Joseph Allchin, “The Rohingya, Myths and
Misinformation,” Democratic Voice of Burma, June 22, 2012,
http://www.dvb.no/analysis/the-rohingya-myths-and-misinformation/22597
(accessed February 11, 2013). Zaw Htay’s facebook page is
https://www.facebook.com/hmuu.zaw. Human Rights Watch viewed a series of posts
on the situation in Arakan State from late May to early June 2012, including the quotation printed here, prior to their deletion.

[39] Ibid. The public statements continued even after the violence
began on October 21, 2012. The Arakan Liberation Party (ALP) is a political
organization founded in Rangoon in 1967 that controls a small non-state ethnic
army, founded in 1974 and based in Bangladesh. On October 25, 2012, the ALP
released a four-point statement blaming the violence on “illegal Bengali
immigrants” and alleging the conflict was the result of “a
well-organized plan carried out by the illegal Bengali immigrants and the countries
that are supporting them to help them to be recognized as a new ethnic group
during the transition period in Burma.” The statement calls for a
“supreme effort” to be taken by the Arakanese people “to protect and preserve our land, on which we have
been living for generations, from the Bengali people.” Arakan Liberation
Party, Organizing and Information Department, “The statement released by
Arakan Liberation Party (ALP) on the issue concerning the violence caused by
the illegal Bengali immigrants,” October 25, 2012. The ALP statement
references the local controversy surrounding land. Many Arakanese assert that
they are the rightful owners of the land on which Rohingya now live – and
that the land must be taken back. One prominent Arakanese leader in Sittwe told
Human Rights Watch: “One thing I would like to explain is that over 200
villages have been lost [after 1942], and those villages belonged to Arakanese.
The Bengalis invaded and occupied them. Historically the village names are all
Arakanese names.” Human Rights Watch interview with M.M., Sittwe, Arakan State, November 2012.

[54] See “Burma’s Vice President Calls for Development in
Rakhine State,” Mizzima News, September 24, 2012,
http://www.mizzima.com/news/inside-burma/8083-burmas-vice-president-calls-for-development-in-rakhine-state.html
(accessed February 6, 2013).

[62] Rohingya who are found by the authorities to own mobile phones
have been fined large sums by Nasaka or in some cases charged with a crime
under the Telecommunications Act or the Electronic Transactions Act and
imprisoned. The Telemcommuncations Law prohibits owning mobile phones and other
“wireless telegraphy aparatus” without permission and violations
carry fines and prison terms of up to three years.

[64] Ibid. The Electronics Transactions Act of 2004 has been used to
imprison dissidents and others. Violations under the act bring sentences of 7
to 15 years and fines. Activists have typically been charged under vague
provisions in the law that criminalizes electronic acts deemed
“detrimental to the security of the State or prevalence of law and order
or community peace and tranquility or national solidarity or national economy
or national culture.” Electronics Transactions Act of 2004, ch. XII,
33(a).

[65] Human Rights Watch interviews, November and December 2012. See
also “Urgent Action: Doctor Held Incommunicado in Myanmar,”
http://www.amnesty.org/fr/library/asset/ASA16/010/2012/fr/6f99ff6a-7763-4ee7-9214-5a6827ffc0ef/asa160102012en.html.

[66] Human Rights Watch, The Government Could Have Stopped This,
pp. 20-37.

[67] Dr. Tun Aung was found guilty of violating the Foreign Exchange
Regulation Act, 1947, section 24(1); the Emergency Provisions Act of 1950,
section 5(j); and penal code sections 505(b) and 153(a); and the Wireless
Telegraph Act, section 6(1). The Burmese penal code 505 states:
“Whoever makes, publishes or circulates any statement, rumor or
report… (b) with intent to cause, or which is likely to cause, fear or
alarm to the public or to any section of the public whereby any person may be
induced to commit an offence against the State or against the public
tranquility ... shall be punished with imprisonment which may extend to two
years, or with fine, or with both.” The penal code 153(a) states: “Whoever
by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representations,
or otherwise, promotes or attempts to promote feelings of enmity or hatred
between different classes of [persons resident in the Union] shall be punished
with imprisonment which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with
both.”

[72] Tomás Ojea Quintana, “Statement of the Special
Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar,” February 16,
2013, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=13004
(accessed April 10, 2013), p. 4.

[96] Many Arakanese view the organizations as biased because they have
tended to focus their aid programs on the Rohingya. Of course the greater needs
of the Rohingya population in northern Arakan State has been created in large
part by the Burmese government’s discriminatory policies.

[106] See European Commission, “Myanmar: Displaced Rohingyas still
in dire need of urgent humanitarian assistance,” January 31, 2013, http://ec.europa.eu/echo/media/photos/picture_stories/burma06_en.htm
(accessed February 11, 2013).

[107] The government estimate of IDPs is undoubtedly on the low side
because it is based on the number of displaced who are registered in formal
camps and not those who are in more remote or unregistered displacement sites.

[132] See Appendix II, Ministry of Border
Affairs, “Answers for English Version on Human Rights Watch
Questions,” Government of Burma response to Human Rights Watch, February
26, 2013, pp. 2-3. Note the government referred to 211 “casualties”
and then went on to explain 270 injuries – 153 Arakanese and 117
Rohingya, leaving us to determine that by “casualties” they meant
“dead.”

[160] Ministry of Border Affairs, “Answers for English
Version on Human Rights Watch Questions,” Government of Burma response to
Human Rights Watch, February 26, 2013, p.3. See Appendix II. This was in
response to the question: “What did the authorities do
with the bodies of those killed during the sectarian violence in Arakan State?
What was the procedure for handling the bodies? Where are the location(s) of
the bodies?”

[166] Local Rohingya took the photos at great personal risk, since
possession of mobile phones and cameras routinely results in serious
repercussions, including violence or detention. One Rohingya woman told Human
Rights Watch, “No one is allowed to handle cameras or telephones. These
will bring great trouble.” Human Rights Watch interview with K.M., displacement site, Sittwe, Arakan State, November 2012.

[172] “They [Arakanese] started torching the houses. When the
people tried to put out the fires, the paramilitary [police] shot at us. And
the group beat people with big sticks. ... We collected 17 bodies with some
help from the authorities [army]. ... I can only identify one person. His name
was Mohammad Sharif. He was 28 years old. ... We picked up the bodies. We put
them on the military trucks. I saw one clearly; the bullet went through the
chest on the left.” Human Rights Watch interview with Z.E., Sittwe,
Arakan State, June 2012,TheGovernment
Could Have Stopped This, p. 26, n. 54.

[194] See Human Rights Watch, The Government Could Have Stopped This,
pp. 49-50.

[195] A journalist told Human Rights Watch that he interviewed a
Rohingya mother of six whose family had been repeatedly turned back by
Bangladeshi authorities during the second week of June 2012, before the boat
finally made it to Bangladesh. She told the journalist, “We floated in
the sea for four days and nights. My five-year-old daughter died in the boat.
She starved to death under the hot weather in the sea.” Human Rights
Watch viewed a tape-recorded interview with the woman and other members of her
family on June 28t in Bangladesh. Cited in Human Rights Watch, The
Government Could Have Stopped This, p. 49.

[203]Tomas Ojea Quintana, “Progress report of the Special
Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar,” UN General Assembly A/HRC/13/48, March 10,
2010,
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/13session/A.HRC.13.48_en.pdf
(accessed April 10, 2013) p. 13.

[205] In 2001, following violent clashes between Arakanese and Muslims
in Sittwe, measures to “strengthen” restrictions were imposed,
similar to what Burma’s Union Minister for Home Affairs Lt. Gen. Ko Ko
announced to parliament on July 31, 2012. The UN Special Rapporteur for human
rights in Burma from 2000-2008, Sergio Pinheiro, wrote in 2001:

Reportedly,
as non-citizens they [Rohingya] are subjected to a rule according to which they
are required to obtain authorization to travel outside their township. The implementation of this rule is said to have been tightened,
especially after reported clashes between Rakhine [Arakanese] Buddhists and
Muslims in Sittwe, the State capital, in February 2001. ... Allegedly, at
present only a few rich people can afford a travel authorization. ... Such
restrictions would affect the livelihood of common Muslims and Hindus,
compelling some of them eventually to leave the country.

Based on over 30 interviews with
Burmese Muslims and various religious leaders in Burma, Human Rights Watch
released a briefing entitled Crackdown on Burmese Muslims, which also
describes tightened restrictions following attacks against Muslims by Arakanese
in Sittwe in 2001:

Restrictions
seem to have been far more rigidly enforced last year because of heightened
concerns about the Muslim community. There are many credible reports of Muslims
being taken off buses and trains when they were not able to produce their
travel papers, and in some cases even when they did. For instance, in February
2001, eight Muslim men traveling to Rangoon were arrested despite having
identity papers because they were traveling outside Arakan State without
permission from the local police. They were sentenced to seven years
imprisonment. In October, a Muslim man was taken off a plane in Kawthaung
airport in southern Burma, bound for Rangoon without apparent reason; his
ticket was cancelled.

[207] See reports by UN Special Rapporteurs on human rights in Burma
listed in footnote #400;
Human Rights Watch, Burmese Refugees in Bangladesh, May 2000,
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/05/01/burmese-refugees-bangladesh-0 (accessed
March 1, 2013), part III. See also “Reforms must be undertaken for
financial and legal institutional development during the drafting process of
monetary and capital market law: MPs,” New Light of Myanmar, August
1, 2012,
http://www.burmalibrary.org/docs13/NLM2012-08-01.pdf (accessed April 10, 2010).

[208] “Reforms must be undertaken for financial and legal
institutional development during the drafting process of monetary and capital
market law: MPs,” New Light of Myanmar, August 1, 2012,
http://www.burmalibrary.org/docs13/NLM2012-08-01.pdf (accessed April 10, 2010).

[213] About 44 percent of Arakan State inhabitants live below the
poverty line, second only to Chin State, according to a 2011 study by the UN
Development Program. See UNDP, “Integrated Household Living Conditions
Survey in Myanmar (2009-2010): Poverty Dynamics Report, June 2011; see also UN
General Assembly, “Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human
Rights in Myanmar,” A/66/365 (September 16, 2011),
http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/MM/A-66-365.pdf (accessed April 10,
2013), p. 17.

[214] Email communications with representative of The Arakan Project, a
non-governmental organization focusing on the plight of the Rohingya in
northern Arakan State, December 9, 2012.

[216] Irish Center for Human Rights, Crimes Against Humanity in
Western Burma: The Situation of the Rohingyas, 2010,
http://www.nuigalway.ie/human_rights/documents/ichr_rohingya_report_2010.pdf
(accessed April 10, 2013), p. 129-131.

[222] Since October 2012, Muslims have not been allowed to attend the
university in Sittwe. The IDP camps also lack any meaningful provision of
education. Human Rights Watch interviews, displacement sites, Arakan State,
November 2012.

[230] The MNHRC was created under Government Notification 34/2011.
"Formation of Myanmar National Human Rights Commission," New Light
of Myanmar, September 6, 2011, http://www.burmalibrary.org/docs11/NLM2011-09-06.pdf
(accessed April 10, 2013).

[231] Regarding independence from the government, according to the
Sub-Committee on Accreditation of National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs),
executive instruments such as decrees and orders do not comply with the Paris
Principles, which are minimum standards relating to the status and functioning
of NHRIs for the protection and promotion of human rights. See International
Coordinating Committee of NHRIs Sub-Committee on Accreditation, general
observations, Geneva, 2009, para. 1.1., www.ihrc.ie/download/pdf/genera_observations_sca.pdf(accessed
July 14, 2012); See also, OHCHR, National Human Rights
Institutions: History, Principles, Roles, and Responsibilities,
Professional Training Series No. 4 (United Nations: New York and Geneva, 2010),
p. 32, http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/PTS-4Rev1-NHRI_en.pdf
(accessed April 8, 2013).

[232] Myanmar National Human Rights Commission, “Statement No.
(4/2012) of Myanmar National Human Rights Commission concerning incidents in
Rakhine State in June 2012,” New Light of Myanmar, July 11, 2012,
http://www.burmalibrary.org/docs13/NLM2012-07-11.pdf (accessed April 10, 2013).

[233] “The Government of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” press release, August 21, 2012,
http://www.president-office.gov.mm/en/issues/foreign-policy/id-568 (accessed
April 10, 2013).

[234] “Statement with Regard to Conflict in Rakhine State,”
Republic of the Union of Myanmar, President Office, Statement no. 1/2012,
October 25, 2012, http://www.mofa.gov.mm/news/2012/Sept_Oct2012/President%20Office%20Statemen%20on%20Conflict%20in%20Rakhine%20State_25-10-2012.pdf
(accessed March 6, 2013).

[235] “Secretary-General Outlines Letter Received From President
of Myanmar Pledging to Deal with Perpetrators of ‘Senseless
Violence,’” UN Department of Public Information, news release,
SG/SM/14648, November 16, 2012,
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs//2012/sgsm14648.doc.htm (accessed December 9,
2012).

[236] “The Government of the Republic of the Union of
Myanmar,” Information Team, Press Release No. 2/2012, November 18, 2012,
http://www.president-office.gov.mm/en (accessed December 9, 2012).

[237] “The Government of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar
Ministry of Foreign Affairs Press Release,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs, press
release, December 6, 2012,
http://www.president-office.gov.mm/en/issues/foreign-policy/id-1202 (accessed
March 7, 2013).

[242] While the UN has not disaggregated the demographics of the
displaced, UN Resident Coordinator Ashok Nigram has said: “The number of
Rakhine [Arakanese] people who are displaced is far fewer than the number of
Muslim people who have been displaced.” Helen Regan, “Ashok Nigam:
‘Fundamentally, everybody has a right to citizenship,’” Democratic
Voice of Burma, December 13, 2012, http://www.dvb.no/interview/ashok-nigam-fundamentally-everybody-has-a-right-to-citizenship/25221
(accessed February 1, 2013).

The
[government] response cannot be seen to be adequate within the time that we
have had. ... There are issues of access to these communities that we have faced.
We faced also issues in the allocation of land for putting up shelter. ... We
have faced issues with communities who have been very averse to giving us
access. And there is a level of discomfort that many foreign humanitarian
workers feel when they go in and try to help the people in the Muslim areas.
They have to go through Rakhine [Arakanese] areas, and in some areas there is a
level of discomfort that is expressed to the international staff, who then feel
reluctant to be able to go back and help. So that is an issue of access that we
have. The government has become better in terms of allowing us to go to many of
the areas in Rakhine [Arakan] but we still have administrative issues in terms
of getting travel authorizations and visas on time. ... [This] doesn’t
help in a situation when we have to respond urgently.

Helen Regan, “Ashok Nigam:
‘Fundamentally, everybody has a right to citizenship,’” Democratic
Voice of Burma, December 13, 2012,
http://www.dvb.no/interview/ashok-nigam-fundamentally-everybody-has-a-right-to-citizenship/25221
(accessed February 1, 2013).

[250] UNHCR reports that it has worked with the Burmese government to
construct permanent housing for displaced Arakanese in Maungdaw, “with
243 houses completed by the government, UNHCR and soon, CARE.” UNHCR
Myanmar, “Rakhine Situation Update #9,” January 30, 2013, p. 2.

[264] Human Rights Watch interview with K.M.,
displacement site, Arakan State, November 2012. At the time of writing, the
World Food Program (WFP) had the most access of all international humanitarian
agencies in the state and was providing food aid to affected populations.

[277] The undated pamphlet is entitled, “Beware! NGOs that came
here to assist Bengali Kalars,” and is signed by a group identifying
itself as Wuntharnu Ethnic People, an organization established after the
violence began in June. Unofficial translation, June 2012.

[281] For example, a 29-year-old Arakanese journalist in Sittwe said:
“After the conflict Dr. Tun Aung was hiding in the UNHCR office [in
Maungdaw]. He is not UNHCR. His daughter Mya has a high-ranking UNHCR position.
He has links to al-Qaeda. In Maungdaw he is one of the main leaders in command
of the people. The government arrested him.” The journalist provided no
evidence to support his wholly unfounded allegation of an al-Qaeda connection.
Human Rights Watch interview with B.D., Sittwe, Arakan State, June 2012; see
also Human Rights Watch interviews with B.C., B.D., C.Z., C.D., C.G., C.H.,
Sittwe, Arakan State, June 2012.

[287] Human Rights Watch conducted interviews in Rangoon Region and Mandalay
Region with Arakanese and Burmese who spoke of support for the campaign against
the OIC opening an office in Burma, September-November 2012.

[288] These materials were observed in Sittwe and Mrauk-U townships,
October and November 2012.

[294] For documentation of the anti-Muslim backlash in Burma following
the Taliban’s actions, see Human Rights Watch, Crackdown on Muslims,
July 2002,
http://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/asia/burmese_muslims.pdf (accessed April
10, 2013).

[296] See “Anti-Myanmar Rally in Myanmar Over Rohingya Aid,”
Agence-France Presse, August 19, 2012,
http://www.rnw.nl/english/bulletin/anti-un-rally-myanmar-over-rohingya-aid
(accessed December 9, 2012). This was not the case for activists who recently
protested in Rangoon on September 21, 2012 against the war in Kachin State
– 13 of them now face jail time for allegedly violating the peaceful
assembly law by protesting without permission. Similarly, villagers and monks
in Monywa, Sagaing Region, recently protested a Burmese military and
Chinese-operated copper mine in Monywa that resulted in a forcible crackdown by
police, injuring up to 40 protesters, including many with severe burns. See
“Burma: Peaceful Protesters Charged,” Human Rights Watch, news
release, October 1, 2012,
http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/10/01/burma-peaceful-protest-organizers-charged
(accessed March 15, 2013); “Burma: Drop Charges Against Peaceful
Protesters,” Human Rights Watch, news release, January 13, 2013,
http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/01/13/burma-drop-charges-against-peaceful-protesters
(accessed March 15, 2013); “Burma: Investigate Violent Crackdown on Mine
Protesters,” Human Rights Watch, news release, December 1, 2012, http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/12/01/burma-investigate-violent-crackdown-mine-protesters
(accessed March 15, 2013).

[326] UNOCHA’s Rakhine Response Plan,
http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Revised%20Rakhine%20Response%20Plan%20%28amended%29.pdf,
p.27, Reflecting input from humanitarian actors working in
Arakan State, notes “the longstanding problem of lack of any citizenship
of around 800,000 people in Rakhine State,” – the 800,000 being the
Rohingya.

[327] See Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, art. 15(2) (“No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality”);
International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial
Discrimination, art. 5(d)(iii) (governments shall “undertake ... to
guarantee the right of everyone, without distinction as to race, colour, or
national or ethnic origin, to equality before the law, notably in ... the right to
nationality”); International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, art.
26 (“The law shall ... guarantee to all persons equal and effective
protection against discrimination on any ground such as race,… ”).

[328] Regarding UN offers of assistance to the government of Burma to
review the 1982 Citizenship Law, see UNOCHA, Rakhine
Response Plan,
http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Revised%20Rakhine%20Response%20Plan%20%28amended%29.pdf, p. 29.

[332] The UN Committee on the
Rights of the Child has recommended to the government of Burma: “In the
field of the right to citizenship, the Committee is of the view that the State
party should, in the light of articles 2 (non-discrimination) and 3 (best
interests of the child), abolish the categorization of citizens, as well as the mention
on the national identity card of the religion and the ethnic origin of
citizens, including children. In the view of the Committee, all possibility of
stigmatization and denial of the rights recognized by the Convention should be
avoided.” “Concluding observations of the Committee on the Rights
of the Child: Myanmar,” UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, January
24, 1997. CRC/C/15/Add.69, http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/%28Symbol%29/1f80c171544388888025644b003cd574?Opendocument
(accessed April 10, 2013); The committee similarly called for the law to be
repealed in November 2008. See “Human rights situations that require the council’s
attention,” UN General Assembly, A/HRC/10/19, March 11, 2009, http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/10session/A.HRC.10.19.pdf
(accessed April 10, 2013).

[333]Sections 42 to 44 of the 1982 Citizenship
Law on the qualifications required for Burmese naturalized citizenship read:

42) Persons
who have entered and resided in the State prior to 4th January, 1948, and their
children born within the State may, if they have not yet applied under the
Union Citizenship Act, 1948, apply for naturalized citizenship to the Central
Body, furnishing conclusive evidence. 43) The following persons, born in or
outside the State, from the date this Law comes into force, may also apply for
naturalized citizenship: (a) persons born of parents one of whom is a citizen
and the other a foreigner; (b) persons born of parents, one of whom is an associate
citizen and the other a naturalized citizen; persons born of parents, one of
whom is an associate citizen and the other a foreigner; (d) persons born of
parents, both of whom are naturalized citizens; (e) persons born of parents,
one of whom is a naturalized citizen and the other a foreigner. 44) An
applicant for naturalized citizenship shall have the following qualifications:
(a) be a person who conforms to the provisions of section 42 or section 43; (b)
have completed the age of eighteen years; be able to speak well one of the
national languages; (d) be of good character; (e) be of sound mind.

[336] “Progress report of the Special
Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar,” Tomas Ojea
Quintana, A/HRC/13/48, March 10, 2010, http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/13session/A.HRC.13.48_en.pdf
(accessed April 10, 2013).

[341] Burmese officials and members of Burmese society regularly claim
the Rohingya name is merely a political construct recently invoked to create an
ethnic identity that does not exist. See also Human Rights Watch interviews
with Arakanese, Sittwe, Arakan State, June-July 2012 and November 2012; Al
Jazeera, “The Hidden Genocide,” documentary film, December 9,
2012; U Shw Zan and Dr. Aye Chan, Influx Viruses: The Illegal Muslims in
Arakan (New York: Arakanese of the United States, 2005).

[345] The last census was conducted in 1983 and widely viewed as having
neglected certain segments of the population, particularly ethnic nationalities
living in conflict areas.

[346] David Stout, “Minister Rejects Calls for International
Investigation in Arakan,” Democratic Voice of Burma, July 31,
2012,
http://www.dvb.no/news/rohingya-not-to-be-included-in-census-minister/23097
(accessed February 2, 2013).

[347] “UNFPA Meets with Myanmar Leaders, including Aung San Suu
Kyi, and Young People,” United Nations Population Fund, August 27, 2012,
http://www.unfpa.org/public/lang/en/home/news/pid/11575 (accessed February 2,
2013).

[356] The authorities denied Rohingya IDPs assistance in making their
way from a remote displacement site in Pauktaw Township to Sittwe, where they
would have been able to come to shore on a jetty, and where they might find
food, medical care, and other humanitarian aid. Instead, they attempted to
reach Sittwe from another coastal area with large swells and no assistance from
the navy. Human Rights Watch interviews with K.M., K.O., K.P., displacement site, February 4,
2013.

[357] Tens of thousands of displaced Rohingya in the officially
recognized camps are not receiving adequate amounts of aid and in other areas
the government is failing to facilitate aid deliveries through Arakanese
communities hostile to the delivery of aid to Muslims. The government has also
stalled in granting visas to aid workers and in granting travel authorizations.
See chapter VI of this report on “Humanitarian
Concerns.”

[358]Rome Statute of the International
Criminal Court (ICC), opened for signature July 17,
1998, reprinted in 37 I.L.M. 999 (1998), arts. 7(1)(d), 7(2)(d),
http://untreaty.un.org/cod/icc/statute/99_corr/cstatute.htm (accessed April 10,
2013). The Rome Statute entered into force on April 11, 2002
and the ICC has the authority to prosecute the most serious international
crimes since July 1, 2002.

[361] These included
the Nuremberg Charter, the Tokyo Charter, the Allied Control Council Law No.
10, and the statutes of the international criminal tribunals for the former
Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Rwanda (ICTR).See Roy Lee (ed.), The International
Criminal Court: Elements of Crimes and Rules of Procedure and Evidence
(Ardsley, NY: Transnational Publishers, 2001), p. 86; M. Cherif Bassiouni and
Peter Manikas, The Law of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia (New York: Transnational Publishers, 1996), pp. 627-38 (arguing
that the crime of "deportation" under the Nuremberg Charter included
"all unjustified transfers [including] internal displacement.").

[366] Human Rights Watch interviews with J.N., K.Q., and confidential communications with a Rohingya prisoner,
November 2012. The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Burma, Tomas
Quintana, visited Rohingya prisoners in 2012 and documented their torture and
ill-treatment.

[370] See Irish Center for Human Rights, Crimes Against Humanity in
Western Burma: The Situation of the Rohingyas,
http://www.nuigalway.ie/human_rights/documents/ichr_rohingya_report_2010.pdf
(accessed April 10, 2013), p. 109.

[371] See reports by UN special rapporteurs on human rights in Burma in footnote
#400.

[378]Report of the United Nations Commission
of Experts Established Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 780 (1992), 27
May 1994, http://www.his.com/~twarrick/commxyu4.htm#par129
(accessed April 10, 2013).

[382]The right to return has been recognized
by some experts as a norm of customary international law. See "Current
Trends in the Right to Leave and Return," U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985
(emphasizing that the right to return is part of the whole body of human
rights, and stating that the "concordance of State practice and common
opinion juris, [the right to return] created a legal obligation according to
customary international law."),
http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/Amensty%20Laws_Joinet.pdf (accessed April 10,
2013).

[384] See, e.g., International Convention on
the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), which guarantees "the right of
everyone, without distinction as to race, colour, or national or ethnic origin,
to equality before the law, notably in the enjoyment of the following rights: … the right to "leave any country, including one's own, and to
return to one's country." ICERD, 660 U.N.T.S. 195, entered into force
Jan. 4, 1969, art. 5 (d)(ii), http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/d1cerd.htm (accessed
April 10, 2013).

[386] See Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human
Rights, “Housing and Property Restitution in the
Context of the Return of Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons,” Resolution 1998/26,
http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/topic,4565c2253e,4565c25f49d,3dda64517,0,UNSUBCOM,,.html
(accessed April 10, 2013). The Sub-Commission was under the
UN Human Rights Council, which was dissolved in 2006.

[387] UN Security Council, Resolution 820, S/Res/820, April 17,
1993, http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/RES/820(1993) (accessed
April 10, 2013). Similar language by the Security Council
affirming this right to return can be found in resolutions addressing the
conflicts in Abkhazia and the Republic of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Cambodia, Croatia, Cyprus, Kosovo, Kuwait, Namibia, and
Tajikistan.

[391] The UN Guiding Principles on Internal
Displacement are not legally binding but provide an authoritative normative
framework for the protection of internally displaced persons. The Guiding
Principles are a firm reinstatement of existing international human rights,
refugee, and humanitarian law as it relates to the internally displaced. They
draw heavily on existing standards and provide additional guidance and
explanation when there are gaps. They are intended to provide practical
guidance to governments, other competent authorities, the UN and other
intergovernmental agencies and NGOs in their work with internally displaced
persons.

[392] Universal Declaration of Human Rights, art. 8, http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/b1udhr.htm
(accessed April 10, 2013); see also, International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,
G.A. res. 2200A (XXI), 21 U.N. GAOR Supp. (No. 16) at 52, U.N. Doc. A/6316 (1966), 999 U.N.T.S. 171, entered into force Mar. 23, 1976. art. 3(a) (states undertake to “ensure that any person whose rights or freedoms as herein
recognized are violated shall have an effective remedy, notwithstanding that
the violation has been committed by persons acting in an official capacity.”)
Burma is not a party to the covenant,
http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/b3ccpr.htm (accessed April 10, 2013).

[400] See Human Rights Council, “Progress
Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in
Myanmar,” A/HRC/19/67, March 7, 2012; UN General Assembly,
“Situation of human rights in Myanmar,” A/66/365, September 16,
2011; UN Human Rights Council, “Progress report of the Special Rapporteur
on the situation of human rights in Myanmar,” A/HRC/16/59, March 7, 2011;
UN General Assembly, “Situation of human rights in Myanmar,”
A/65/368, September 15, 2010; UN General Assembly “Progress report of the
Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar,”
A/HRC/13/48, March 10, 2010; UN General Assembly, “Situation of human
rights in Myanmar,” A/64/318, August 24, 2009; UN General Assembly,
“Human rights situations that require the council’s
attention,” A/HRC/10/19, March 11, 2009; UN General Assembly,
“Human rights situations that require the council’s
attention,” A/HRC/7/18, March 7, 2008; UN Human Rights Council,
“Implementation of General Assembly Resolution 60/251 of 15 March 2006
Entitled ‘Human Rights Council,’” A/HRC/4/14, February 12, 2007;
UN Economic and Social Council, “Question of the violation of human
rights and fundamental freedoms in any part of the world,”
E/CN.4/2006/34, February 7, 2006; UN General Assembly, “Situation of
human rights in Myanmar,” A/60/221, August 12, 2005; UN Economic and
Social Council, “Question of the Violation of Human Rights and
Fundamental Freedoms in Any Part of the World,” E/CN.4/2005/36, December
2, 2004; UN Economic and Social Council, “Question of the Violation of
Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in Any Part of the World,”
E/CN.4/2005/36, December 2, 2004; UN Economic and Social Council,
“Question of the violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms in
any part of the world,” E/CN.4/2003/41, December 27, 2002; UN Economic
and Social Council, “Question of the violation of human rights and
fundamental freedoms in any part of the world,” E/CN.4/2002/45, January
10, 2002; UN General Assembly, “Situation of human rights in
Myanmar,” A/56/312, August 20, 2001; “Situation of human rights in
Myanmar,” UN General Assembly, A/55/359, August 22, 2000; UN Economic and
Social Council, “Question of the violation of human rights and
fundamental freedoms in any part of the world,” E/CN.4/2000/38, January
24, 2000; UN General Assembly,
“Situation of human rights in Myanmar,” A/54/440, October 4, 1999;
UN General Assembly, “Human rights questions: Human rights situations and
reports of the special rapporteurs and representatives,” A/52/484,
October 16, 1997; UN Economic and Social Council, “Question of the violation
of human rights and fundamental freedoms in any part of the world, with
particular reference to colonial and other dependent countries and
territories,” E/CN.4/1996/65, February 6, 1996; UN General Assembly,
“Human rights questions, human rights situations and reports of special
rapporteurs and representatives,” A/51/466, October 8, 1996; UN Economic
and Social Council, “Report on the situation of Human Rights in Myanmar,
prepared by Mr. Yozo Yokota, Special Rapporteur on the Commission on Human
Rights, in accordance with Commission resolution 1995/72,”
E/CN.4/1996/65, February 5, 1996.

[401] For findings about UN knowledge of international crimes in eastern
Burma, see International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School, Crimes
in Burma, May 2009, http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/2009/05/28_burma.html
(accessed December 6, 2012).

[402] There are eight distinct ethnic groups of Burma, including the
majority Burman, and numerous sub-groups comprising the government’s list
of 135 officially recognized ethnic nationalities. The Rohingya are not
recognized as an ethnic group of Burma. The eight primary groups are Arakanese,
Burman, Chin, Kachin, Karen, Karreni, Mon, and Shan.

[410] Quoted in Martin Smith, Burma:
Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity, p. 241; see also Irish Center for Human Rights, “Crimes Against
Humanity in Western Burma,” pp. 91-92.

[411]Alan Lindquist (head of UNHCR sub-office
in Cox’s Bazaar in 1978), “Report on the 1978-1979 Bangladesh
Refugee Relief Operation,” June 1979. Lindquist states on p. 9:
“None of the U.N. agency heads raised any objection to using food as a
political weapon.” See also Human Rights Watch, Burma: Rohingya Muslims: Ending a Cycle of Exodus?, p.3.

[426] UN Economic and Social Council,
“Report on the situation of Human Rights in Myanmar, prepared by Mr. Yozo
Yokota, Special Rapporteur on the Commission on Human Rights, in accordance
with Commission resolution 1995/72,” E/CN.4/1996/65, February 5, 1996.

[428]“Question of the violation of human
rights and fundamental freedoms in any part of the world,” UN Economic and Social Council, Situation
of human rights in Myanmar, E/CN.4/2000/38, January 24, 2000, p. 14.

[429] UN Economic and Social Council,
“Question of the violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms in
any part of the world,” E/CN.4/2002/45, January 10, 2002,
http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G02/100/65/PDF/G0210065.pdf?OpenElement
(accessed November 28, 2012).

[431] UN Economic and Social Council,
“Question of the violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms in
any part of the world,” E/CN.4/2002/45, January 10, 2002,
http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G02/100/65/PDF/G0210065.pdf?OpenElement
(accessed November 28, 2012).

[436] UN special rapporteur on human rights in Burma, Tomas Ojea Quintana, “Progress Report
of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar,”
UN Human Rights Council, A/HRC/19/67, March 7, 2012.